In Italy's Lake Comacchio, a long V-shaped eel trap runs from shore to shore, extending like an arrowhead toward the Adriatic Sea. When eels heading for their ocean breeding grounds arrive at the tip of her V, the aluminum panels allow them to enter the trap, but prevent them from exiting. Metal replaced wood and reeds in the 1980s, but otherwise the trap design has remained the same since ancient times.
On a recent foggy morning in Comacchio, I met Stefano Geri, who was removing traps in one of the basins on the north side of the lagoon. When Jeri was a child, 40 years ago, the total catch per night was 10 tons.
„…sixteen, seventeen…“ Jeri grabbed the slimy fish and tossed them into a plastic tub, where they crawled on top of each other in slimy circles. „…Eighteen, nineteen.“ He threw in the last one. Comacchio eels once filled the lagoon. Now it fits inside the bucket.
For thousands of years, the ubiquity of this fatty fish has made eel a staple in the diets of poor people across the continent. In Italy it is served in soups and risottos, in Spain it is fried to a crisp and layered on crackers, in Scandinavia it is boiled to a soft texture, in England it is floating in a gelatinous goo, and in Germany and the Netherlands it is smoked with its skin on. It's a Christmas staple that can be found everywhere.
For many biologists, closing Europe's eel fisheries seems like the last option left after years of neglect.
However, the decline in European eel populations over the past half century has been so dire that the species is now at risk of following the same path as the passenger pigeon. In 2008, the International Union for Conservation of Nature began classifying the European eel (Anguilla Anguilla) is on the verge of extinction. Around the same time, the European Union adopted a comprehensive eel regulation establishing measures to support stock recovery, including through seasonal fishing closures and restrictions.
But recovery has not materialized, and scientists now say only urgent and extreme action can save this iconic fish.Annual report Looking ahead to 2024, the International Council for Sea Exploration (ICES) – the regional fisheries advisory body whose findings formed the basis of the EU's eel regulations – is currently aiming for „zero fishing in all habitats''. „It should be done,“ he argues. For many biologists, closing eel fisheries, at least temporarily, seems like the last option left after years of neglect. „It's been a century where we knew there was a problem and we didn't face it,“ said Willem Dekker, a Dutch biologist known as the architect of the EU's eel regulations.
While eels are a familiar element of European culture, they are also a mystery to those who have studied them. Aristotle tried to solve the problem of eel reproduction as early as the 300s BC, eventually concluding that eels must emerge miraculously from muddy riverbeds. At the time, no one had discovered eel reproductive organs. They also never witnessed eels breeding in the wild, but a page in the scientific record remains blank to this day. No pair of European eels have ever been caught in the act.
The European eel is born in the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso Sea is an amorphous body of water in the western Atlantic Ocean, bounded by changing ocean currents rather than land. The small, transparent larvae are carried by ocean currents to the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe. Here they complete their first metamorphosis into a long but transparent „glass eel“. Glass eels migrate up freshwater streams and rivers, where they settle into long-term habitats, living for years or decades as long, dark-colored „yellow eels,“ eventually becoming shiny and fertile. Transition to the mature „silver eel“. At that point, an unknown force calls upon them to swim to unfathomable depths, some 1,000 miles upstream to the Sargasso Sea, where they will spawn and die.
The ovaries and testes of the European eel only fully developed on the way to the Sargasso Sea, and it was not until the late 1700s that the ovaries of female eels (from Comacchio Reef) were first identified by careful anatomical dissection. It was from. It took even longer to find the testicles. The young Sigmund Freud, then a medical student and on his way to becoming the greatest philosopher of sexual repression, was one of many men who took pains to insert a female eel to find its reproductive organs. It was a person. (Freud said he spent the spring of 1876 in Trieste, about 100 miles northeast of Comacchio, butchering healthy eels in the Adriatic for advisers in Vienna, to no avail.)
Europe's market for young eels is the strongest in Asia, and traffickers are shipping staggering quantities of glass eels.
The eel's mysterious life cycle defies standard fisheries science. When developing management plans, biologists often rely on a number called spawning stock biomass (SSB), which is calculated as the total biomass of reproductively mature fish. Because the reproductively mature European eel hides in plain sight in the dark, deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean, there is no way to accurately estimate her SSB for this species. “Assessing fish stocks is a routine task and requires a lot of mathematics,” says Willem Dekker. „There are protocols on how to do it.“ In the case of the European eel, „doing these things without knowledge, without data, without difficult models to make life easier becomes more difficult.“
No one has figured out how to artificially breed and raise eels. Scientists have successfully induced breeding of European eels in the laboratory through hormone treatments, but eel larvae have been reared in the laboratory due to difficulties in determining the environmental conditions and diet they need to survive. Very few eels can live for more than three months. Therefore, eel farms must rely on a supply of wild-caught glass eels that can be raised to commercial size. Europe's market for young eels is strongest in Asia, where traffickers are shipping staggering quantities of glass eel to satisfy the Japanese fish appetite, but this is the biggest increase in eel exports across EU borders. This is in direct contravention of a 2010 EU law banning
Juvenile glass eel at the Stokf fishing grounds, Germany.
Patrick Pleul / dpa Picture-Alliance / Alamy Stock Photo
Unable to rely on aquaculture to meet market demand and reduce pressure on wild eel stocks, management authorities needed to focus on more direct conservation strategies. But the reasons for the collapse of the European eel are not simple, and they are struggling to find a solution. Data collection revealed that since 1980, the amount of glass eels arriving on European shores has declined by 15 percent annually. Many factors are clearly involved in this long-term decline, but the extent of each is unclear.
Overfishing appears to be only one piece of the puzzle, as EU fishing regulations have not brought about a recovery. The other is habitat destruction, with dams, hydropower plants, and land fill cutting off important migration routes. Diseases such as the angilirid herpesvirus, heavy metals and pollutants are also known to reduce the chances of eels reproducing, and a warming Atlantic Ocean is changing the ocean currents that eels rely on to complete their life cycles. There is a possibility that there are. The recent surge in illegal youth trafficking to Asia is sure to further devastate the population.
„People want clear answers and we can't provide them,“ admitted Caroline Durif, one of the current chairs of the ICES Eel Working Group. When asked about the reason for the drastic decline in eel numbers, Willem Dekker replied: Full stop. No one knows about fishing, habitat loss, pollution, all of that. ”
The mystery surrounding the eel allows different groups, each with their own priorities, to shift blame for the collapse.
To ban the harvest of European eels, as proposed by ICES, the European Parliament would need to repeal and amend the current EU directive requiring countries to take measures to support stock recovery. This seems unlikely given that the 2023 committee vote on a resolution calling for a new approach to regulation received support from 80% of delegates present. „There is no intention to ban it, and it won't help,“ Andrew Kerr, president of a nonprofit association of conservationists, scientists and commercial fishers called the Sustainable Eel Group (SEG), said in a video call. told me. his home in England. „Eels are much more complex than that, and you can't save them if you stop fishing them. What we need is a very controlled level of fishing, but we need to address all the environmental factors.“
Durif admits that the EU still needs convincing from the scientific community before accepting a zero catch limit. „The EU is working on making a special request to ICES to see if it can measure the efficiency of its regulations, but we keep saying we can't,“ she said. She said the recommendation for a ban follows a precautionary approach, a principle commonly agreed upon in the fisheries sector of implementing management measures, even drastic, with the aim of reaching specific habitats. He pointed out that he was following. She added: „We can't give any less or more accurate advice[than a ban]because we don't have the data to determine whether this is increasing mortality, such as hydropower or fishing.“
The mystery surrounding the eel allows different groups, each with their own priorities, to shift blame for the collapse. SEG's management focus is on ensuring glass eel fisheries, distributors, farms, smokehouses and retailers, which represent around 90 per cent of Europe's legal market, operate within existing EU regulations. I argue that it should be placed. The group has developed standards for all commercial operators to follow in order to obtain SEG certification and is also working to combat human trafficking into Asia.
For more than a decade, Kerr has been writing to the EU and discussing illegal shipments of glass eels with authorities in The Hague. „It took a long time for eels to become an EU priority for reverse trade,“ he said. In the late 2010s, police crackdowns accelerated. In 2017, $547,000 worth of glass eels were discovered hidden under boxes of other legal fish at Heathrow Airport, sparking headlines such as „Smuggling makes eels 'worth as much as cocaine'“. In 2022-2023, Operation Lake, coordinated by Interpol, resulted in the arrest of 256 people on suspicion of illegal eel trafficking.
In Sweden, the threat from hydropower plants to migratory eels is estimated to be equal to or greater than the threat from fishing.
Eel fishermen across Europe fear their livelihoods will be threatened by the fishing ban, and say authorities should address other known causes of deaths. In Sweden, the threat from the country's 2,300 hydroelectric power stations, whose turbines routinely tear apart migrating eels, is estimated to be equal to or greater than the threat from fishing. On the coast of Henno Bay in southeastern Sweden, also known as the Eel Coast, a group of fishermen and activists are campaigning to preserve the region's eel fishing tradition, which dates back to the Middle Ages, when eels were used as currency for payment. Is going. They survive on taxes, rent, debt, and the traditional eel dinner inside the fisherman's hut. David Hermanson, a local historian and director of Eel Coast Cultural Heritage, said policymakers avoided the problems of hydro turbines and habitat degradation and took the „low-hanging fruit“ of fishing restrictions. He criticizes her for choosing. „Less than 1 percent of fully grown, mature eels that leave the Swedish coastline are fished,“ he claimed.
But scientists almost unanimously argue that imposing fishing bans is necessary, if not always sufficient. Giuseppe Castardelli, consultant biologist for Pau Delta Park, which manages the Commatio Lagoon, argues: Tradition should remain. That's the right thing to do. That's the history of these places. But if you have to stop fishing for five years, stop fishing for five years. Population numbers continue to decline. Soon we are in danger of falling below the survival limit of our species. ”