The eel is on the verge of extinction. Already in 2008, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified it as “critically endangered” and things have not only not improved but have gotten seriously and rapidly worse. The alarm has just been raised by a Spanish scientific team.
The common eel or European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a blue fish, without bones in the fins. With an elongated and cylindrical body, and a grayish color, it measures approximately between one and one and a half meters. Mysterious animal for centuries, Aristotle believed that eels were born from the bowels of the Earth. In the past they were highly valued: their meat was preserved in salted or smoked form.
But today they don’t have good press, unlike elvers, when these are the fry of the first. Glass eels are very expensive while eels are a cheap fish. However, in places like Mallorca, the Valencia of La Albufera, the Tarragona of the Ebro Delta, they form an indispensable part of the traditional recipe book.
Eels from the Ebro Delta, for centuries
The exploitation of fishing in these lagoons of the Ebro Delta dates back to the 13th century and was key in establishing the population in the area. The Sant Pere brotherhood has had fishing rights since 1879 and has kept a record of catches since 1966. They fish for both yellow eel, which they call borda, and silver eel, which they call vera, ready to return to the Sargasso Sea.
The return to that sea of the northern Atlantic Ocean is one of the most amazing migrations of nature, says the CSIC. The eel arrives in the form of an eel to the European and North African coasts, about two years after being born thousands of kilometers away, in the Sargasso Sea.
In the past they were abundant in the seas of the European continentas well as in the north of the Atlantic Ocean. There were so many that the eels that developed from those eels were consumed by all human communities, coastal and inland. In this way, fisheries that became industrial during the 20th century were sustained.
Late 20th century: the eel collapses
The eel collapse came in 1980 and was abrupt. The reduction in the arrival of elvers was around 95%: for every hundred elvers that completed a trip from the Sargasso before 1980, in the 21st century about five do so. In the Ebro Delta, eel catches decreased by 77% between 1970 and 1990.
After that collapse, The European eel population has not recovered and that is what a scientific team from the Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC) and the Ebro Delta Natural Park. The results of their study, published in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystemsreveal a “very worrying” situation. The conservation status of the eel “is seriously deteriorating very rapidly.”
For your researchthe researchers have taken into account data from the eel catches in three of the main lagoons of the Ebro Delta (Encanyissada, Tancada and Canal Vell), contributed by the brotherhood of Sant Carles de la Ràpita. They included both yellow and silver eels in the record. To these data they added the information generated by a scientific monitoring program started in 2008.
“The drastic reduction affects a species that is already at extreme risk of disappearing.”
“The most worrying result of our work is the spectacular decline that the species is experiencing in recent yearsof a magnitude similar to that of the 80s and even faster,” explains Miguel Clavero, researcher at the EBD-CSIC and one of the authors of the study.
Between 2015 and 2017 the abundance of eel began to reduce in all the environments studied in the Ebro Delta. The loss of abundance in recent years has been greater than 80%, but “on this occasion the drastic reduction does not affect a population abundant, as happened at the end of the 20th century, but to a species that already is at extreme risk of disappearing“says Clavero.
Stop fishing for eels
It is then worth asking how come there has been no progress in the conservation of the eel when the alarm was raised in the 20th century. Scientists recognize that Causes of the decline of this species are unclear.
The Spanish study believes that the danger of the eel’s survival may be related to the irruption of the blue crab in the Ebro Delta (Callinectes sapidus), a predatory invasive crab that reaches high densities. Its presence has also had a notable effect on the populations of other fish, mollusks and crustaceans.
“If we want to conserve the species, if we want the European eel to continue to exist, we must start by stopping fishing and marketing it.”
But the underlying cause is inaction in fishing policies. The group of eel experts sponsored by ICES (EU fisheries advisory body) has been advising for more than two decades bring eel catches “as close to zero as possible.” In the last three years it has recommended the closure of the fishery, calling for no catch, in any environment and for any purpose. The CSIC recalls that most EU member states have ignored this recommendation.
In light of this investigation, it appears that the current situation of the eel may be even worse than that which led ICES to request the closure of the fishery. “If we want to conserve the species, if we want the European eel to continue to exist, we must start by stopping fishing and marketing it“concludes Clavero. The authors of the work propose the cessation of eel exploitation by involving the sector in monitoring the species and with a support system.
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