Fishermen within the U.S.’s solely commercial-scale fishing trade for useful child eels as soon as once more had a productive season trying to find the tiny fish
FILE – Bruce Steeves makes use of a lantern to search for younger eels, referred to as elvers, on a river, Thursday, March 23, 2012, in southern Maine. Fishermen within the U.S.’s solely commercial-scale fishing trade for useful child eels as soon as once more had a productive season trying to find the tiny fish. (AP Photograph/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
The Related Press
PORTLAND, Maine — Fishermen within the U.S.’s solely commercial-scale fishing trade for useful child eels as soon as once more had a productive season trying to find the tiny fish.
Child eels, referred to as elvers, are sometimes price greater than $2,000 per pound due to how useful they’re to Asian aquaculture corporations. That makes them some of the useful fish species within the U.S. They’re raised to maturity to allow them to be utilized in Japanese food, a few of which is offered within the U.S. in unagi dishes at sushi eating places.
The elvers have once more been price greater than $2,000 per pound on the docks this yr, in response to the Maine Division of Marine Assets. The fishermen are restricted to a mixed quota of rather less than 10,000 kilos per yr and have been about by it by early Might, the division stated. The worth was a tick under final yr’s, however increased than the earlier two.
Fishermen this yr have been aided by favorable climate and powerful worldwide demand, stated Jeffrey Okay. Pierce, a former Maine state consultant and adviser to the Maine Elver Fishermen Affiliation. International sources of child eels have largely dried up, and that has made Maine eels extra useful in recent times.
“There’s an enormous demand for it. They’re not getting quite a bit out of Europe,” Pierce stated. “And it’s only a nice product.”
South Carolina is the one different state within the nation with a fishing trade for child eels, and that state’s fishery is way smaller.
Maine fishermen harvest the eels utilizing nets in rivers and streams each spring. Some fish in rural areas, whereas others harvest them within the state’s cities, together with Portland and Bangor. They’re additionally harvested by members of Native American tribes within the state.
The worldwide trade for eels has been threatened by poaching for a few years due to how useful the fish are. Maine has adopted new controls in recent times to attempt to thwart unlawful elver fishing and dealing within the state. Federal regulation enforcement has additionally focused unlawful eel dealing and fishing.
Nonetheless, unlawful dealing persists. One research revealed this yr by a analysis group led by the College of Exeter discovered that as a lot as two-fifths of the North American unagi samples they examined truly contained European eels, that are banned from importing or exporting.
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