August 8, 2018 –A regulatory board decided Wednesday that Maine’s baby eel fishery, the only one of its kind in the U.S. and one of the most lucrative fisheries in the country, will not be allowed to expand next year.
Fishermen in Maine are allowed to harvest a total of 9,688 pounds of the elvers per year, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission shot down a proposal to increase that by about 20 percent. The increase would’ve been a boost to a fishery that routinely fetches some of the highest prices in the country on a per-pound basis.
Baby eels, called elvers, can be worth more than $2,000 per pound at docks because they are used by Asian aquaculture companies in the worldwide supply chain for Japanese food. Maine is the only state in the U.S. with a significant fishery for them, and worldwide supplies have been low, making them even more valuable.
Maine’s elver fishery is coming out of a contentious season that ended in May, when authorities shut down the fishery early amid concerns about illegal sales. The fishery is tightly monitored to deter poaching, and the illegal transactions circumvented a swipe card system used to track elver sales in Maine, authorities said.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times