March 22, 2021 — Maine’s baby eel fishermen are hopeful for a more stable season in 2021 as they seek one of the most valuable natural resources in New England.
The fishermen seek the eels, called elvers, so they can be sold as seedstock to Asian aquaculture companies. They are then raised to maturity and sold as food, such as sushi.
Maine has the only significant fishery for the eels in the U.S., and they sometimes fetch more than $2,000 per pound.
The season starts Monday, just over a year after the coronavirus pandemic upended the 2020 season. Prices for the eels plummeted last year because of disruption to the worldwide economy caused by the early stages of the pandemic.
The price of elvers to fishermen fell from $2,091 per pound in 2019 to $525 last year. The industry suffered because eels are almost exclusively a restaurant product, and the pandemic shuttered restaurants the world over, said Mitchell Feigenbaum, an elver dealer.
But the recovery of the economy in China, a major buyer, bodes well for this season, Feigenbaum said.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times