Saving Seafood

Maine elver fishing industry had one of its most successful seasons ever

May 10, 2022 — Maine’s baby eel fishing industry is wrapping up one of the most successful seasons in its history.

Maine is the only state in the country with a significant fishery for baby eels, which are also called elvers. The elvers are sold to Asian aquaculture companies that raise them to maturity for use as food.

Fishermen have just about tapped out the season’s quota of about 9,300 pounds of eels, state regulators said. The eels were worth nearly $20 million at the docks, with a per-pound price of $2,162, regulators said Monday.

The per-pound price was the third highest in state history, and the total value was at least the fifth highest, state records show.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

 

Lincoln County is a growing force in Maine’s elver fishery

April 20, 2022 — Elver season is winding down as almost 8,000 pounds of the tiny glassine eels have been pulled from Maine waters, including the Pemaquid and Medomak rivers in Lincoln County.

The elver fishery is the second most valuable fishery in Maine despite its brief season, lasting only 11 weeks from March 22 to June 7. Recent years have seen annual income generated by the fishery exceed $20 million. And from a per pound perspective it easily tops lobsters as the most lucrative fishery in the state, and possibly in the country.

High demand for the young eels overseas spiked the price to more than $2,800 per pound in 2018. After plummeting to around $500 in 2020 due to the pandemic, prices have recovered and are averaging $2,114 per pound this year, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

MAINE: Waldoboro eel farm wants to raise at least 2 million eels a year for American tables

August 5, 2021 — Ground has been broken on Maine’s first land-based eel aquaculture operation in Waldoboro.

Sara Rademaker, founder and president of American Unagi, said when it’s complete, the 27,000-square-foot facility will be able to grow and process at least 2 million eels and perhaps take back a tiny portion of an industry that’s been dominated by Asian markets.

“Right now, we have this really valuable glass eel fishery. The entirety of that fishery is being exported mostly to China, they’re grown on farms there, and then we’re importing them back into the US,” Rademaker said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MASSACHUSETTS: Count finds more elvers visiting Rockport

July 12, 2021 — The numbers, brought to you by Eric Hutchins and his volunteers from their annual census of eel movement along the Mill Brook, have been down for several years.

Not in 2021. This summer, the mighty Mill Brook has exploded into the eel-formational super highway.

The year began promisingly, with 350 eels counted from April 1 to the second week of June. But no sooner had the first wave abated than another began and the Mill Brook was en fuego.

Hutchins, a NOAA Fisheries biologist and Gulf of Maine restoration coordinator, said the streak included several hundred-eel days. As of June 29, the total count was 985 — including a jump of 402 eels in a single week.

Eel-lectrifying!

Now the really important stuff: The Eel Raffle fundraiser, where ticket buyers tried to get closest to the pin on the final number of eels counted between April 1 and Columbus Day.

“Of the original 58 raffle tickets sold, only 14 are left viable with total count guesses over 1,000,” Hutchins wrote in a June 29 email. “The next closet ‘guess’ is 1,033. But that might fall later today. Things are fast and furious this year at the eel trap.”

Where they always respect their elvers

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Elvers plentiful in Japan, harvest remains capped

June 28, 2021 — The return of glass eels to Japan improved this year, but a subcommittee of the Fisheries Policy Council meeting held in Tokyo approved maintaining the current cap on the number that can be stocked to aquaculture ponds in line with a regional resource management agreement.

The amount of elvers of the Japanese eel, anguilla japonica, collected in Japan had been in decline since the latter half of the 1950s, corresponding with channelization of rivers for flood control and filling of wetlands for reclamation.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine elver fishery jumped in value by over 200 percent after rocky 2020

June 25, 2021 — Maine saw the value of its elver fishery jump back up to historic levels after a 2020 that was marred by closures and low prices caused by covid-19.

Preliminary data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources indicate that the value of the catch, which topped out at 8,960.97 pounds out of an available 9,620.70 pounds, is reported to be $16.56 million. The price came in at average of $1,849 per pound in 2021.

Elvers, also known as glass eels, have become the second most valuable fishery in the state in recent years, behind only lobster. However, 2020 saw the fishery plummet in value after covid-19 social-distancing restrictions closed the fishery, and a lack of demand from key markets caused the value to drop.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine’s annual elver harvest value jumps by more than $11M

June 18, 2021 — Maine’s annual baby eel fishing season has ended with a statewide catch worth an estimated $16.5 million, representing an $11.5 million increase over the value of the state’s 2020 harvest.

Worldwide demand for eels was abnormally low in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic depressed global trade and demand for eels at restaurants. The vast majority of baby eels caught in Maine are shipped live to eastern Asia, where they are raised in aquaculture ponds to adult size and then harvested for the global seafood market.

Maine is limited to an annual harvest of roughly 9,600 pounds of baby American eels, also known as elvers, to help protect the species from overfishing. The state’s annual elver fishing season runs each year from late March through early June. Maine is the only state with a sizable elver fishery.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MASSACHUSETTS: Count of elvers visiting Rockport high

June 9, 2021 — Consider the full life of the American eel and what it takes for the wee critters to find their way from their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea to the town’s historic Mill Brook.

Once born, eel eggs float to the surface of the salt water spawning grounds northeast of the Bahamas and southwest of Bermuda. They hatch into transparent larvae. If they had thumbs, this is when they would stick them out. No appendages mean no thumbs. Still, they manage to hitch a ride.

Largely left to the whims of wind and currents, the larvae begin a year-long journey to fresh water portals. Some land as far south as the north coast of South America. Others travel as far north as Greenland.

And some hit the sweet spot, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the Mill Brook and from there up into Rockport’s Mill Pond and Loop Pond, and perhaps as far away as Briar Swamp in Dogtown. In all, they swim more than 1,000 miles.

Waiting for them is Eric Hutchins and his merry band of volunteers, nature’s own census takers for the eels that have by now matured from larvae into translucent elver stretching roughly 2 to 4 inches.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Baby elvers rocket back up in value in Maine

April 21, 2021 — Tiny baby eels are worth big bucks again in Maine.

The state is home to the U.S.’s only significant fishery for the baby eels, which are called elvers, and it’s taking place right now. Prices tanked last year due to disruption to the worldwide economy caused by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

This year, the fishery is experiencing a return to normalcy. The tiny, wriggling fish are worth $1,634 per pound to fishermen, the Maine Department of Marine Resources reported on Monday.

The elvers are worth so much because of the crucial role they play in Asian aquaculture. They’ve been worth between $1,300 and $2,400 per pound every year since 2015, except last year, when they were worth $525.

The elver business has benefited from improved health in international trading at large, said Mitchell Feigenbaum, an elver dealer.

“There’s confidence in the market in all commodities right now,” Feigenbaum said “There’s a crazy boom in real estate, a crazy boom in the stock market, a crazy boom in the eel market.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

MAINE: Elver season is now underway

April 7, 2021 — The elver season is already underway, but it likely won’t heat up in earnest until temperatures ratchet up a few more degrees. 

“People ain’t catching a whole lot right now,” said Ellsworth-based Darrell Young, the co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen’s Association. 

The multimillion-dollar fishery opened on March 22, but local fishermen have reported little action while waiting for waters to warm up. 

They chalk the delay up to recent rains, which have kept the waters cool and flows fast, less than ideal conditions for the small spaghetti-like young eels that migrate upriver from the sea.   

As of April 1, a total of 315 pounds of the state’s 7,556-pound quota had been caught, according to the state Department of Marine Resources, though the agency cautioned that those figures were “extremely preliminary.”  

The Passamaquoddy Tribe fared better, catching 716 pounds of the tribe’s 1,288-pound quota, according to the DMR report.  

The elver season runs through June 7, or until the quota is met.  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander