Saving Seafood

Maine ends elver season early amid claims of illegal sales

May 24, 2018 — Maine’s lucrative elver fishery will shut down two weeks early — at 6 a.m. Thursday — due to what state regulators said Wednesday are illegal sales that jeopardize the Department of Marine Resources’ ability to manage the fishery.

A Maine Marine Patrol investigation allegedly revealed that some elver dealers in Maine were paying substantially less per pound in cash for elvers than those that were harvested and accounted for through the state’s new swipe card system, according to a release from the DMR.

In March, the price per pound for baby eels, also known as elvers, hit a record high of $2,700 to $2,800 per pound.

The shutdown comes through emergency rulemaking.

An investigation continues, and charges will be filed against dealers and harvesters who bought and sold elvers without using the state’s swipe card system.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Eels break records in Maine, where they sell for big money

May 21, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — America’s only significant state fishery for baby eels has blown past records for value as high demand from overseas aquaculture companies is driving prices to new heights.

Fishermen in Maine search for the eels, called elvers, in rivers and streams every spring so they can be sold to Asian aquaculture companies as seed stock. Fishermen have sold more than $20 million worth of the eels so far this season, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

That is the highest total since interstate managers instituted a quota system for the eels in 2014. The previous record was $13.4 million, and fishermen still have until June 7 to catch more of the eels this year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

Changes to US eel fishery up for hearings on East Coast

May 9, 2018 — BREWER, Maine — Interstate fishing managers are considering a host of changes to the way they regulate commercial eel harvesting, and public hearings about the subject are getting started in New York.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is holding the hearings in May and June from Florida to Maine. The first hearing is on Wednesday in New Paltz, New York. The commission is considering making changes to the eel quota system.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Haven Register

 

Maine’s ‘grandfather of eel fishing’ to be sentenced for trafficking in poached elvers

May 3, 2018 — A Woolwich man credited with playing a key role in establishing Maine’s lucrative baby eel fishery is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday morning in Portland for buying and selling more than half a million dollars worth of baby eels he knew had been caught illegally.

William “Bill” Sheldon, 71, is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Portland at 10 a.m. Thursday, to be sentenced for violating the federal Lacey Act by trafficking in poached baby eels, also known as elvers.

Sheldon is one of the most influential fishermen in Maine and has been described by national news media as “Maine’s elver kingpin” and “the grandfather of eel fishing.”

He is one of 21 men, 12 of whom live in Maine, charged in four states with participating in a scheme to illegally catch and sell elvers. In all, the defendants caught, sold and transported more than $5.25 million worth of poached elvers in nine East Coast states from 2011 through 2014, according to prosecutors.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Hearings Coming About Increase in Baby Eel Fishing Quota

May 3, 2018 — BREWER, Maine — A proposal to allow Maine‘s elver fishermen to catch more of the baby eels will be up for a public hearing in the state next month.

Fishermen harvest elvers in rivers and streams in Maine so they can be sold to Asian aquaculture companies for use in Japanese food after they’re raised to maturity. Maine’s the only state in the country with a significant fishery for elvers, and fishermen are limited to 9,688 pounds per year.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering increasing that total to 11,749 pounds per year. The eels are currently worth more than $2,000 per pound at docks so the increase would mean access to millions of dollars in revenue.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at US News

 

Why Maine Is The Only State In The US With A ‘Significant’ Elver Fishery

May 1, 2018 — If you’ve ever read a story in the news about elver fishing season, you’ve probably seen some variation of this line: “Maine’s the only state in the U.S. with a significant fishery for elvers.”

Maybe you thought that’s because elvers don’t exist in large numbers outside of Maine — that would be a reasonable assumption. But the real reason is somewhat more complicated.

Let’s start at the beginning, in the Sargasso Sea. Although it sounds romantic, the Sargasso Sea is actually just an area of the North Atlantic that’s full of Sargassum, a kind of seaweed that floats in the ocean rather than existing close to land.

It’s a unique marine environment, and the Sargasso Sea provides a cozy place for many species to spawn or start out life, including baby turtles and some types of fish.

It’s also where the life cycle of the American eel both begins and ends. They’re born there, and after a few decades — eels are incredibly long-lived animals — they swim back in, spawn and die.

Outside of that, eels’ life cycle isn’t that well understood, but we know they start out there as tiny leptocephali, or larvae, which look like nothing more than a transparent willow leaf.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

Maine baby eel harvest on pace to hit record value under catch limits

April 30, 2018 — Halfway through the 2018 fishing season for baby eels, the value of landings in Maine is on track to reach its highest annual total since a statewide catch limit was imposed four years ago.

With the average price remaining above $2,300 per pound since opening day on March 22, the value of the statewide catch so far was nearly $12.5 million as of Friday evening, which is $337,000 more than the catch value for all of 2017. It represents 4,800 pounds caught statewide since the season started, meaning fishermen have caught only half of Maine’s overall annual catch limit of 9,688 pounds.

As of Friday evening, dealers were paying fishermen $2,600 per pound on average for baby eels, also known as elvers, the state Department of Marine Resources indicated in a news release. That average is twice as high as it was last year, when elver fishermen earned $1,300 per pound.

If the average price paid to fishermen stays above $2,500 through the remainder of the season, and if fishermen reach the statewide catch limit, the value of Maine’s 2018 elver landings would total at least $24 million.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

3 Sentenced for eel poaching and selling

April 24, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Three men accused of together poaching and selling as much as $1 million worth of baby eels, called elvers, have been sentenced to a combination of probation and fines.

The sentencing Thursday was part of a bust of an eel poaching ring, the Bangor Daily News reports. The Operation Glass Eel bust led to 21 men being prosecuted on charges of illegally catching, selling and transporting more than $5 million worth of elvers in nine East Coast states. Twelve of the men are from Maine.

Two of the men sentenced Thursday in Portland were from Massachusetts. The third lives in Maine.

Elvers are one of the country’s most lucrative fisheries on a by-the-pound basis. They are sold to Asia for sushi.

Maine is the only U.S. state with a significant fishery for baby eels, or elvers. The tiny, translucent eels are sold to Asian aquaculture companies to be raised to maturity for use as food. They’re a key piece of the worldwide supply chain for Japanese dishes such as unagi, and some eventually make it back to the U.S.

The elvers are also legally harvested in South Carolina. Massachusetts only has a fishery for older eels, those larger than 9 inches, as do Maryland, Virginia and Delaware.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Elver prices soar to new heights amid shortage, Asian demand

March 30, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — The price of baby eels in Maine is soaring to record highs at the start of a season in which buyers expect to pay more for the valuable fish.

Baby eels, called elvers, are an important part of the worldwide Japanese food trade. Maine fishermen harvest them from rivers and streams so they can be sold as seed stock to Asian aquaculture companies.

The average price per pound to fishermen through the first week of the 2018 season was $2,608, the Maine Department of Marine Resources said Friday. The most elvers have ever sold for in a full season was $2,172 per pound, in 2015, and they sold for a little more than $1,300 per pound last year.

Fishermen in Maine, which has the only significant elver fishery in the U.S., are poised for high prices this year because of a poor harvest in Asia. The early part of Maine’s season has been held back somewhat by bad weather, but harvesters are looking forward to a good year, said Darrell Young, co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen Association.

“Hoping that when there’s eels around, they fight over them,” Young said. “When mother nature decides she wants to turn around.”

The season opened March 22, and fishermen had about 95 percent of their 9,688 pound quota remaining through Thursday evening, the state marine agency reported on its website. The season runs until June 7, and the first week was somewhat slow, which fishermen expected at the end of a cold winter.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

 

Maine: Early elver landings slow

March 28, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Forecasters predicting a slow but lucrative start to the elver fishing season were right on both counts.

The season got under way last Thursday and, by the close of business on Tuesday, the Department of Marine Resources said dealers reported buying 114.95 pounds of elvers and paying harvesters $315,789 for their landings — an average price of $2,747 per pound.

Darrell Young, a longtime elver harvester who established a buying station in Ellsworth this year, said the price opened high last week and has fluctuated between $2,600 and $2,900 per pound.

“I think the price will stay high,” Young said Tuesday.

The season, and the market, still has a long way to go.

Maine elver harvesters fish under a fixed landings quota of 9,688 pounds during a season that ends this year on June 7. Based on the DMR reports, with slightly more than nine weeks left in the 10-week season, about 1.2 percent of the quota has been taken out of Maine’s rivers.

Of the early landings, 51.84 pounds, about 45 percent of the total, were landed by holders of licenses issued by the Passamaquoddy Tribe. Under an agreement negotiated among Maine and the state’s four federally recognized Indian tribes in 2013, the Passamaquoddy have been allotted 14 percent (1,356 pounds) of the total elver quota allowed the state by the interstate Atlantic States Fisheries Management Commission. Another 7.9 percent is allocated among the Penobscot Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and the Aroostook Band of Micmacs.

Earlier this week, the ASMFC’s American Eel Board announced that it would defer until August a decision, currently being considered, on whether to restore Maine’s elver quota for the 2019 fishing season to its 2014 level of 11,749 pounds.

It isn’t hard to understand why the season is off to a slow start.

Elvers are juvenile eels that migrate from the Atlantic Ocean, where they are born, up Maine’s streams and rivers to fresh water, where they may live as long as 20 years before returning to the sea to spawn. Right now, the water in those rivers is cold, with the temperature kept down by recent snow melt.

On Tuesday, Young said fishing was slow around eastern Maine and in the Ellsworth area.

“There were just a couple of fishermen fishing last night and they got nothing,” Young said.

“We need warmer water, get rid of the snow and get the ice out of the ponds,” he said. “There are no eels running now. They’re laying out in the ocean.”

The data confirms what is obvious to the eye, and the elver fisherman.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American