For every 100 elvers (eel fry) that arrived on the Spanish coast in the eighties of the last century from the Sargasso Sea (in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, within the Bermuda Triangle), today nine enter . Elsewhere in the North Sea, the situation is even more critical. The collapse of the European eel population (Anguilla anguilla) is so pronounced that in the Iberian Peninsula more than 80% of its habitat has become extinct. If global measures are not taken – throughout Europe – and capture is stopped, the appreciated delicacy will run out, scientists warn.
With it, it will bring with it the profits of fisheries that sell elvers at very high prices, especially the first catch, which this year reached 8,135 euros per kilo two weeks ago at the Ribadesella fish market. It is a symbolic price that immediately plummets and, although it varies greatly, it remains between about 400 and 600 euros per kilo for fingerlings. The European Union allows the capture of both breeding and adult species with limitations, despite being classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The eels begin to arrive in November to the Iberian Peninsula. They measure about seven centimeters and weigh between 0.25 and 0.35 grams – up to 3,500 individuals can fit into one kilo. They have survived an almost impossible journey of some 6,000 kilometers, letting themselves be carried for a year and a half or two by the Gulf Stream, from their birthplace, the Sargasso Sea, located in the North Atlantic, off the coast of the southeastern United States.
After this journey, they enter the estuaries of Europe and North Africa and go up the rivers, where they begin to grow. First they go through the yellow eel phase, the growth phase, until they become silver eel due to the color of their belly. In low latitudes they mature in about five or seven years, a period that increases to 20 or 30 years in the highest and coldest temperatures. It is time to return to the Sargasso Sea, a journey that is reduced to six months when they are adults. There they reproduce, die and the new recruits begin their long journey.
“The species is below the biological threshold and that implies that any event can cause its disappearance, so what does not make sense is that we continue eating fry or adult eels,” explains Carlos Fernández, professor of zoology at the University of Córdoba. . Spain is the only country where the young are caught for consumption, but researchers believe that it is also very harmful to capture the adults, when they have already reached sexual maturity and are going to reproduce.
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Eels face dams and other obstacles in rivers that impede their passage—pollution, fishing, illegal trafficking—as well as climate change and all the gaps in their way of life that make their conservation difficult. “One of the worst scourges is the black trade with the Asian market, where eel is highly valued. It is estimated that between 100 and 200 illegal tons leave Europe every year,” says the professor. The business is such that at the end of August more than 25 tons of eel were seized, 18 of them in Spain, in an operation coordinated by Europol in 32 countries. Only the latter could have reached a value of more than 20 million euros on the black market, indicates the Civil Guard.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which coordinates the natural resources of the North Atlantic, evaluates the state of the population and sends its results to the European Commission, which makes a proposal to the ministers of the Member States on which they decide. This year, as on other occasions, it has recommended zero catches in all habitats by 2024. The situation of the eel is “critical,” warns Estibaliz Díaz, Spanish representative in the eel group of this organization and researcher at the center of AZTI marine and food technology. The ICES conclusions for the latest report indicate that 0.4 elvers arrive in the North Sea (between the United Kingdom and Norway) for every 100 that entered before; In the rest of Europe, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, this index increases slightly, up to nine specimens.
“There really is no explanation for not prohibiting fishing for a few years by compensating the fishermen. We scientists know that it is at its limit, but the politicians’ vision of nature is myopic and short-term,” responds Fernández. Faced with this extreme situation, the researcher at the Doñana Biological Station, Miguel Clavero, has launched a collection of signatures on change.org to prevent the extinction of the eel. There is also another similar initiative for the academic world.
There are areas where measures have been taken. In 2011, the Andalusian Government established a moratorium in the Guadalquivir upon reaching a historical minimum with values of between 1% and 5% of eel compared to 1960-1979. But in the case of this species, local measures do not produce significant effects, because it is a unique population, so a specimen from Morocco can reproduce with one from Norway, and they do so outside our waters.
“The area lives off elvers”
Pablo Riesgo has been fishing for elver in the Nalón River (Asturias) for 28 of his 46 years, from land, in an artisanal way. He complains that “the water is getting less and less and is very polluted” and rejects the limitations imposed, such as the one that has reduced the elver campaign from four months to 30 days. “The only thing they do is remove from fishing without controlling the chemical substances that end up in the rivers from agricultural operations,” he maintains.
A moratorium on fishing would mean losing around 20,000 euros a year. He is a shellfish farmer and also works on barnacles and squid, but “let’s see how the economy can withstand this decline.” Riesgo belongs to the San Juan de la Arena brotherhood, in whose fish market only elvers are auctioned. Last season, from November 2022 to February 2023, 918 kilos were obtained and auctioned for 425,000 euros, at an average of 463 euros per kilo. The senior patron of the brotherhood, Marino Manuel Díaz, assures that “every year there are fewer elvers” and remembers the economic impact it has on the area: “We all live off it, not just the fishermen.”
The General Secretariat of Fisheries of the Ministry of Agriculture claims to be “aware of the worrying state” of the eel and suggests that, in addition to fishing, climate change may be affecting the Gulf currents and the species. Among the measures that are being applied along with those that affect fishing, include the translocation of specimens, the fight against predators of the species, the temporary disconnection of electricity production turbines, improvements in the river habitat and elimination of obstacles to migration such as reservoirs, “one of the biggest problems in the case of the Iberian Peninsula.”
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