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https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/...ut&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalinkOTTAWA—Back in 1996, Louis MacDonald was among the first fishermen to acquire a license from Canada to catch baby eels. Over the decades, he has hired 20 people to catch and ship them to East Asia, where they are raised to maturity and demand is strongest for the crunchy Japanese-inspired grilled eel filets known as unagi.
This year, MacDonald won’t be sending any elvers, as the baby eels are known. He has let his employees go.
Jolted by a surge in illegal harvesting—along with death threats, gunshots and at least one case of alleged kidnapping in the country’s east coast fishing communities—Canada has banned all baby-eel fishing in 2024 to contain the violence as well as protect dwindling stocks.
The growing craving for eel over the decades, concurrent with the rise of China’s middle class, has triggered overfishing in Japan and Europe, leading to a decline in the species’ population. The European Union banned the import and export of eels in 2010, which led seafood wholesalers to look for alternative sources, bringing the trade—and thousands of poachers—to Canada. MacDonald and other fishermen say elver poachers outnumbered licensed harvesters 10-to-1 during last year’s abbreviated season, closed after 18 days due to concerns about illegal fishing.
MacDonald said he blames the government, which he claims that for over half a decade either ignored warnings from licensed fishers about the rise of poachers, or failed to enforce existing rules to deter lawbreakers. This will mark his second straight year of lost income.
Stanley King, a licensed baby-eel fisherman, near Chester, Nova Scotia.
“We were hoping that they had a year to straighten up this problem, and they really didn’t do anything,” MacDonald said. “They are not doing the job. It is easier for them not to face the issues than it is to face them.”
Annette Gibbons, a top official at Canada’s fisheries department, said the elver fishery has more enforcement officers patrolling affected waterways than any other commercial fishery. Still, she told lawmakers last month that there are areas “where we need a more fulsome regulatory approach than we currently have.”
There is a lot of money at stake. Fishers use mesh nets to scoop up baby eels as they enter Canada’s east coast river systems, and sell them on to aquaculture operations in Asia to raise them until they are ready for market. Elver demand “has resulted in unsustainable eel fishing,” according to a Justice Department indictment filed in 2022 with the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, in relation to charges filed against a seafood distributor and eight of its employees—four of whom are based in China—on allegations of illegally trafficking large volumes of juveniles. “A multibillion-dollar international black market for freshwater eels flourishes.”
Baby-eel exports from the Americas to Hong Kong, an important trade hub for Asia’s aquaculture sector, have grown from two metric tons in 2004 to 157 metric tons in 2022, according to an analysis of customs data by researchers at Japan’s Chuo University published in January in Marine Policy. Canada accounted for over a quarter of those imports, trailing Haiti, which had a roughly two-thirds share.
With those kinds of volumes in play, the elver fishery has become a “focus of harassment, threats and violence between harvesters and toward fishery officers,” Diane Lebouthillier, Canada’s fisheries minister, said last month when she formally closed the season. “Responsible management of resources and public safety must take precedence over everything else.”
Lebouthillier told lawmakers that it is her intention to reopen the baby-eel fishery in 2025.
At its peak, a pound of elvers fetched about $1,800, but fishers say the price has dropped due to black-market activity. Before Canada’s formal decision to close the fishery this year, data from Canada’s fisheries department indicated the price for elvers was about $1,200 a pound.
Jake Rancourt, a fisherman and baby-eel buyer in Bristol, Maine—one of the two U.S. states where elver fishing is legal—said the price has since dropped to between $700 and $900 a pound. Rancourt said Chinese buyers are still purchasing illegally caught elvers from Canada but insist on a lower price to reflect the increased risk of shipping Canadian elvers to Asia. Chinese buyers are maintaining that same price for Maine elvers, Rancourt said. “It is causing a lot of hate, and a lot of discontent down here.”
The Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs, a local indigenous community, said last year one of its members was shot in the leg due to a baby-eel dispute, and said at the time Canadian authorities weren’t doing enough to protect legal fishers. One man from a fishing community on Nova Scotia’s south shore faces a trial next year on 13 charges—including kidnapping, theft and the possession of a weapon, a metal bar—which police allege stem from a 2021 confrontation in which two fishermen were told to hand over their nets with baby eels. A lawyer for the accused said her client has entered not-guilty pleas, and intends to contest the charges in court.
Rick Perkins, a federal lawmaker who represents fishing communities in southern Nova Scotia, has criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government for failing to devote more resources to enforcement. He said he has found notes in his mailbox at his Nova Scotia home, which he believes are from poaching groups, warning him to adopt a lower profile.
“ ‘We know where your wife works, and we will shut you up,’ ” he said, describing one note. One time, he said, he found severed heads of Canada geese in his mailbox. “Nobody’s job should warrant death threats against you and your family. But you know, it is what they are doing.”
Adult American Eel spawn during the late winter and early spring in the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda—after which, the adult dies. Once the eggs hatch, larvae drift, and the Gulf Stream distributes them along the Atlantic coast. The larvae transform into baby eels, and they start swimming, ending up in the waterways of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick beginning in late April, according to scientists at Canada’s fisheries department.
Baby-eel fishing “is not for the squeamish,” said Stanley King, a licensed baby-eel fisherman and a manager at Atlantic Elver Fishery in Caledonia, Nova Scotia. “But they don’t feel slimy or gross. They’re beautiful creatures.”
The question now is whether the ban will have any effect. Since early March, Canada’s fisheries department said its conservation officers have made 57 arrests related to illegal elver fishing, and have seized 14 vehicles, over 100 fishing nets and eight weapons—among them one firearm and four knives.
The crackdown has sparked a backlash among Atlantic Canada’s indigenous communities, who argue—citing top-court judgments dating back to 1999—that they have the inherent right to fish for their livelihood, regardless of the elver-fishing ban.
Indigenous protesters tried on Tuesday to drown out Trudeau during a news conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after conservation officers detained two indigenous fishermen trying to catch baby eels. The fishermen said officers confiscated their mobile phones, fishing waders and boots, and dropped them off at a rural gas station in the evening with no footwear. Friends eventually helped the duo get home.
Trudeau said the allegations were “extremely troubling,” and officials in the fisheries department had launched an investigation. Chief Bob Gloade of Nova Scotia’s Millbrook First Nation told a local news station that, “We need to emphasize to authorities that our rights supersede fisheries regulations.”
It is difficult to stamp out illegal harvesting entirely. Officials say it happens in the evening and often in isolated locations. The barrier to entry is low, because all poachers need is a pair of rubber boots, a headlight, and a good-quality dip net purchased from a sporting goods store.
Illegally-caught baby eels can still be packaged and shipped to Hong Kong in mislabeled boxes, mixed either with legally-caught eels or other seafood, like lobster, officials say.
King, the licensed fisherman, said Canada has lacked the political will to stop illegal baby-eel harvesting, and people like himself are now paying a price. “To put the legal fishermen aside is just callous,” King said. “They obviously let poaching go, and it has grown and grown and grown. Now it is going to be more difficult to put the cat back in the bag.”
