In bopping around the Discovery Channel this morning I came across this Season 10/Episode 4 edition of "Dirty Jobs" that has Mike on a fishing boat on the Mississippi River outside Clarksville MO with a couple fishing for hackleback sturgeon for their Show-Me Caviar. https://showmecaviar.com/
Caviar fishing in Missouri, just north of St. Louis??? On "Dirty Jobs"?? Yep: https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/a ... 696593.php
The couple pulls hackleback sturgeon out of the river with trawling nets, tossing the males back and keeping the valuable females, identifiable by their long, faint blue streak on their underside. These sturgeon have a bizarre second mouth --- almost human-like --- emerging from their underside crescent-shaped slit.
Once caught and kept alive they return to their garage-like processing facility next to their home, where the females are sliced alongside the blue line and roe (eggs) removed by the handful as if they were handling gold. No waste! The remaining fish is saved and shipped to food manufacturers making smoked sturgeon.
The roe are carefully rinsed and strained to eliminate fat and river gunk, then salted and packaged fresh into Skol-like tins for shipping all around the world......for about $400 per pound.
In this same episode the seafood vibe continues as Rowe goes back home to Baltimore --- Mike Rowe sang for six years with the Baltimore Opera Company --- to work in the manufacturing plant for J. O. Crab Seasonings, est. 1945, who claim that most of the "Old Bay" crab seasoning on menus and in restaurant kitchens is actually J. O.'s. The prodigious amounts of spices, flour, and salt in the J. O. plant had Rowe constantly coughing and sneezing. The complete and total washdown after day's work is equally sneeze-inducing.
I'm reminded here of my 7 years at St. Louis's SweeTarts plant on Water Street, where the overnight shift was nothing but total washdown from ceiling to floor, and every manufacturing machine locked out for disassembly and hose-down, after each day's processing of 50,000 pounds of powdered dextrose, citric acid, magnesium stearate (for lubrication of tablets) and artificial flavors.
Anybody for a big crab boil with caviar first course? "Dirty Jobs" Season 10, Episode 4.