When wildlife officers with California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife raided two houses in the Sacramento area earlier this year, they found a live sturgeon gasping for breath, barely alive, on the floor in the garage of one. And in the other they discovered more than 20 jars of caviar, screens used to separate sturgeon eggs from the membrane that binds them together, frozen sturgeon meat, and scales for weighing meat and eggs.

In early May the Sacramento County district attorney’s office arraigned six men suspected of running a sturgeon poaching enterprise. They’re expected back in court on July 19 for a settlement conference, when information about the Sacramento case will be exchanged and a decision made as to whether