ELLSWORTH, Maine — It may have to go up quite a ways more before it compares to gold or saffron, but the price of elvers sure has come a long way in the past two years.
According to officials with Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, the first day of the state’s 2012 elver fishing season on Thursday saw some fishermen getting as much as $2,200 per pound.
Compare that with the 2010 elver fishing season, when the average price fishermen got for juvenile eels was $185 per pound. Between 1994 and 2010, the highest average price for their catch that elver fishermen received in any year was $346 per pound in 2007.
Then last year, it jumped. Demand for the eels, which are shipped live to the Far East and then raised to adult size before being sold in seafood markets, reached unprecedented highs, causing the average price for the season to increase to nearly $900 per pound, according to DMR statistics. In some areas last year the price was reported to be more than $1,000 per pound.
Read the complete story from The Bangor Daily News.