It seems quite certain to me that the fish counter visited by my hypothetical son, or (in the best-case scenario) my hypothetical grandson, will have a severely limited array of choices – as well as much higher prices – than the iced-down display of fruits-of-the-sea to which I’ve become accustomed.

Considering the state of the Chesapeake, it seems not likely that the poor boy will eat Maryland Blue Crabs with any regularity. He may never taste the sweet lumps and flakes, may never steam a bushel on a summer night by the banks of a tidal river, may never suck out the brackish flavor while the Old Bay stings the cuts delivered to his fingers by the hard shells. He may never crunch through a soft-shell for the mustard richness and the rush of the sweet liquor. And while he may sit at the cool marble of the Acme Oyster Bar in the French Quarter and slurp down a baker’s dozen or two of something, the odds of those being the same oysters I’ve eaten there seem very slim.

Each of these foods is among the most distinct flavors available – for now. The list is long, and right up at the top of it: Caviar. Richard Adams Carey, in his book “The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire,” (Counterpoint Press, 333 pages, $26) tells the stories of scientists, criminals, and gourmands obsessed with sturgeon and their offspring. He also makes a very convincing case that without organized conservation efforts, neither will be long for this world.

In general, such conversations put me in two distinct minds. The first, more noble impulse, is that steps should be taken to preserve these animals. Perhaps I should make a donation, or at least stop eating the stuff. But that impulse dissipates quickly, and is replaced by a more realistic rapaciousness, which has me attempting to eat all the fish in the world that I can afford before the Japanese do.

These days, all that I can afford of caviar is pretty much none. Even when it’s cheap, caviar is expensive. But one afternoon, years ago, in Virginia, I made a discovery that was, for a foodie, like finding a sack full of money on the street.

In a small Russian deli, sitting in the cooler amidst the smoked fish and the vacuum packed dumplings, was a seven-ounce tin of sevruga caviar with a price tag that read $27.

“Excuse me, is that price correct?”

The three types of caviar – beluga, osetra, and sevruga – have distinct flavors. Beluga is buttery, subtle, “marine, irrefutably sea-like, but not at all fishy.” Osetra is nutty, although Mr. Carey claims that upon tasting it he could tell no difference, “unless the osetra had a slightly more iodine flavor.” Sevruga is sharper, saltier, “more oceanic,” Mr. Carey writes, “maybe more robust.” Most folks who eat caviar have a favorite, and rarely is it beluga.

In Mr. Carey’s book, Petrossian Sevruga is listed at $72 an ounce. It wasn’t quite so dear back when I made my discovery, but still, $27 for seven ounces, about $3.80 an ounce – well, I bought a lot of it. Then I bought more. I began to sell it to restaurant people I knew at a profit. I was like a small-time, high-school dope dealer, flipping product to get more product.

Oh yes: I smoked my own. I ate caviar on bagels for breakfast. I served martini glasses full of the stuff to friends. Caviar and soft, properly scrambled eggs is one of the best dishes in the world, and I had enough caviar to really do it, because I had caviar coming out of my ears.

I fantasized at the time, through the haze of tiny black eggs that filled my head, that the sister of the shopkeeper, a tall, thin, severely pretty Russian woman, must be smuggling the caviar into the country in the lining of her fur coat. I wasn’t far off.

Mr. Carey accompanied Special Agent Ed Grace of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to JFK Airport. Semi-random searches yielded a couple of passengers with undeclared salmon roe and an “oil trader” (nowhere do the related job titles sound more suspicious than in a customs queue from Aeroflot) with a 500-gram tin of “Astrakhan Sevruga” “wedged into one corner of [his] bag.” It was confiscated.

But this small-fry smuggling, although important, is nothing compared to what’s really going on.

“On the morning of October 28, 1998, Grace got a phone call from a Polish-speaking U.S. Customs agent. She had just heard from a customs attache in Germany, who in turn had heard from a Warsaw airport employee that there were sixteen suspicious suitcases in the belly of Finn Air Flight 003, originating in Warsaw and due that afternoon at JFK.” They got them. “All told, the bags held 901 tins of caviar, adding up to about half a ton and a street value of $1.2 million.”

Two scientists named Birstien and DeSalle have developed a DNA test for caviar. They wrote a letter to Nature in 1996.

The letter cited U.S. Department of Commerce statistics revealing that U.S. imports of caviar had risen by 100 percent since 1991. It mentioned that species of sturgeon inhabiting the Volga River were particularly vulnerable to ‘unregulated over fishing’ because of the demand for their roe. And it noted that caviar dealers have traditionally relied on such crude factors as egg size, smell, texture, taste, and color to identify a caviar’s source species.

The scientist applied their much more accurate molecular test and discovered evidence of misrepresentation of the origin of caviar sold in America. In 1999, they wrote another article, testing high-end New York shops, and they named names. “The dealer’s whose wares failed the molecular test included Zabar’s, Connoisseur, Dean & Deluca, Citarella, Marky’s, Caviar Direct, Balducci, Vinegar Factory, Grace’s Marketplace, and Caviar Aristoff.”

Eve Vega, who works for Petrossian, has a quote she tells the newspapers. Mr. Carey quotes Ed Grace relaying it: ‘”If we list sturgeons as endangered species, it will cause the caviar industry to be just like Chicago, Capone, and liquor.’ ‘But Eve, I think it has already been like that for some time,'” Mr. Carey writes. “Once upon a time the lake sturgeon – like the Atlantic, the short nosed, and the white – couldn’t be wasted fast enough. Lakers from Winnebago and the Great Lakes were plowed into the ground as fertilizer, fed to pigs, burned for cordwood, and thrust into the boilers of steamboats.”

We have a long history of abusing the sturgeon, in other words, and we continue to do so. The crucial difference between a prohibition on liquor and a prohibition on sturgeon is that we’ll never run out of liquor. Sturgeon, however, must be protected. Despite my own appetites Mr. Carey has convinced me this is so, and his necessary book is an invaluable account of the opportunities and obstacles to be faced in any attempt.