Saving Seafood

Tiny glass eel draws big money, political muscle and poachers

January 10, 2018 — During the past few years, the GOP-controlled General Assembly has slashed the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries budget by about 40 percent, leaving departments understaffed and some employees bending under heavy workloads.

At the same time,  a review of more than 3,000 public documents shows that  several elected and former state Department of Environmental Quality officials prompted what appears to be hundreds of hours of DMF time finding ways to justify obtaining a share of the federal glass eel quota to benefit just one company in Jones County — American Eel Farm, owned by Rick Allyn.

Since 2013, Allyn has solicited support from state senators Harry Brown, R-Jones, Bill Cook, R-Beaufort, and Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, and U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-Farmville.

For almost two decades, the glass eel has been closely regulated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Eel Management Board (AEMB), which has limited glass eel harvesing to Maine and South Carolina.

Most glass eels are exported to Asia to be raised to a larger size for use in kabayaki and other popular Japanese dishes. A pound of glass eels — about the size of a grapefruit — can consist of 2,000-4,000 fish. They are juvenile fish that are still transparent with only their spines and eyes visible.

Read the full story at the Outer Banks Voice

 

Maine: DMR sets hearing on elver quotas

January 8, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — With the arrival of the new year, the Department of Marine Resources will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, Jan. 17, on its proposed allocation of individual elver landings quotas for the 2018 season that begins March 22.

The total annual quota allocated to Maine by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is 9,688 pounds. Of that, 2,122 pounds will be allocated among Maine’s four federally recognized Indian tribes—1,356 pounds to the Passamaquoddy Tribe, 620 pounds to the Penobscot Nation, 107 pounds to the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians and 39 pounds to the Aroostook Band of Micmac Indians — as required by a statute enacted by the Legislature in 2014. That leaves a total quota of 7,566 pounds available for fishermen licensed by DMR.

For many harvesters, individual quotas this year will be the same as they were in 2017. Harvesters whose 2017 quota allocation was less than 50 pounds will share equally any additional quota that would have been allocated to licenses that are not renewed, or are suspended, for 2018, reduced by the amount of quota allocated to winners of the lottery for new elver fishing licenses.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Elver trafficking sting yields more jail sentences, another guilty plea

December 15, 2017 — Operation Broken Glass, an interagency sting of a national elver trafficking ring based in Maine, has yielded two more jail sentences and a guilty plea this week.

Yarann Im, a 35-year-old Portland seafood dealer, was sentenced to six months in jail for illegally trafficking 480 pounds of elvers, which are also known as glass eels or juvenile American eels, following a hearing Thursday in federal district court in Portland. Im pleaded guilty in 2016 to buying more than $500,000 worth of eels, or almost a million individual elvers that had been illegally harvested in Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts, and selling them abroad.

Thomas Choi, a 76-year-old seafood dealer from Maryland, was sentenced Thursday to six months in prison with a $25,000 fine for trafficking in $1.26 million of elvers.

On Tuesday, Maine fisherman Albert Cray pleaded guilty to trafficking elvers, admitting to harvesting them illegally in New Jersey and selling them to a Maryland dealer, who then exported them from the United States to buyers in Asia. In 2013, Cray admitted to trafficking more than $250,000 worth of illegally harvested elvers, according to a statement of facts filed with Cray’s plea agreement.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

New York businessman gets 1½ years for dealing in black market eels from Virginia

November 3, 2017 — NORFOLK, Va. — Tommy Zhou knew what they were doing was illegal, according to court documents.

American eel stocks were low as Asian markets rushed to buy more, and strict caps were being imposed on U.S. fishermen.

 But Zhou told the undercover officers who came to his New York office in 2013 that selling him black market eels from Virginia wouldn’t be a problem as long as no one developed a “big mouth.”

And, he said, he was willing to spend $200,000 to have them killed if they betrayed him.

Zhou, 42, of New York, was sentenced Friday to 1½ years in prison for illegally trafficking more than $150,000 worth of juvenile American eels, also known as “elvers” or “glass eels.”

Federal guidelines recommend a sentence of at least one year and four months.

Trial Attorney Shane Waller of the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division declined to comment, as did Zhou’s attorneys.

According to court documents, Zhou established a seafood distribution company in 2010 in New York. The company, known as Wilson Group Sea Trading LLC, imported and exported seafood.

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

 

Regulators approve Maine elver quota

October 24, 2017 — NORFOLK, Va. — Interstate fisheries regulators voted last week to approve Maine’s elver landings quota for another year.

Meeting in Norfolk, Va., on Oct. 17, the American Eel Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission authorized Maine harvesters to land up to 9,688 pounds of elvers during the upcoming 2018 fishing season. That is the same quota the fishery has operated under for the past three years.

They also initiated an addendum to consider alternative allocations, management triggers and coastwide caps relative to the current management program for both the yellow and glass eel commercial fisheries starting with the 2019 fishing season.

Back in 2014, for the first time, the ASMFC established a quota for Maine’s glass eel (elver) landings. The quota governed the 2015 through 2017 fishing seasons. The regulators agreed to review that quota allocation before the 2018 season.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander 

 

American Eel Stock Assessment Update Finds Resource Remains Depleted

October 19, 2017 — NORFOLK, Va. — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Eel Management Board reviewed the results of the 2017 American Eel Stock Assessment Update, which indicates the resource remains depleted. The assessment updates the 2012 American Eel Benchmark Stock Assessment with data from 2010-2016. Trend analyses of abundance indices indicated large declines in abundance of yellow eels during the 1980s through the early 1990s, with primarily neutral or stable abundance from the mid-1990s through 2016. Total landings remain low but stable. Based on these findings, the stock is still considered depleted. No overfishing determination can be made based on the analyses performed.

The American eel fishery primarily targets yellow eel. Glass eel fisheries along the Atlantic coast are prohibited in all states except Maine and South Carolina. In recent years, Maine is the only state reporting significant glass eel harvest. The highest total landings of all life stages occurred from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s after which they declined. Since the 1990s, landings have been lower than historical landings and have been stable in recent decades. The value of U.S. commercial American eel landings has varied from a few hundred thousand dollars (prior to the 1980s) to a peak of $40.6 million in 2012 (largely driven by the price of glass eels).

The 2012 benchmark stock assessment found the resource depleted and Addenda III (2013) and IV (2014) were approved with the goal of reducing mortality across all life stages. These addenda established a 9-inch minimum size limit for commercial and recreational fisheries, a yellow eel commercial coastwide cap of 907,671 pounds, and glass eel quota of 9,688 pounds for Maine beginning for the 2015 fishing year. The yellow eel cap has two management triggers: (1) the coastwide cap is exceeded by more than 10% in a given year and (2) the coastwide cap is exceeded for two consecutive years, regardless of the percent over. If either trigger is met, there is an automatic implementation of state-by-state quotas. The 2015 yellow eel landings were below the cap. However, 2016 landings were 925,798 pounds, which exceeded the cap by less than 10%.

A more detailed overview of the American eel stock assessment is available on the Commission website at http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/59e8c077AmericanEelStockAssessmentOverview_Oct2017.pdf. It was developed to aid media and interested stakeholders in better understanding the results. The assessment update will be available on the Commission website on the American Eel webpage the week of October 23rd.

In other business, the Board maintained Maine’s glass eel quota of 9,688 pounds for the 2018 fishing season. The Board also initiated an addendum to consider alternative allocations, management triggers, and coastwide caps relative to the current management program for both the yellow and glass eel commercial fisheries starting for the 2019 fishing season.

For more information on the stock assessment update, please contact Dr. Kristen Anstead at kanstead@asmfc.org and for information on American eel management, please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior Fishery Management Coordinator, at krootes-murdy@asmfc.org.

A PDF version of the press release can be found here – http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file//59e8c22cpr48AmEelAssmtUpdate.pdf

Poached eels: US strikes at illegal harvests as value grows

Law enforcement authorities have launched a crackdown on unlicensed eel fishermen and illicit sales along the East Coast.

August 7, 2017 — BREWER, Maine — Changes in the worldwide fisheries industry have turned live baby American eels into a commodity that can fetch more than $2,000 a pound at the dock, but the big demand and big prices have spawned a black market that wildlife officials say is jeopardizing the species.

Law enforcement authorities have launched a crackdown on unlicensed eel fishermen and illicit sales along the East Coast.

Although not a well-known seafood item like the Maine lobster, wriggling baby eels, or elvers, are a fishery worth many millions of dollars. Elvers often are sold to Asian aquaculture companies to be raised to maturity and sold to the lucrative Japanese restaurant market, where they mainly are served grilled.

But licensed U.S. fishermen complain poaching has become widespread, as prices have climbed in recent years. In response, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies are investigating clandestine harvesting and sales.

Operation Broken Glass, a reference to the eels’ glassy skin, has resulted in 15 guilty pleas for illegal trafficking of about $4 million worth of elvers. Two people are under indictment, and more indictments are expected.

In Maine, more than 400 licensed fishermen make their living fishing for elvers in rivers such as the Penobscot in Brewer and the Passagassawakeag in Belfast every spring. They say law enforcement is vital to protecting the eels and the volatile industry.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WTOP

Grant to Thomaston startup may help keep Maine elvers home

American Unagi wins a $10,000 grant from Gorham Savings.

August 2, 2017 — American Unagi, the Thomaston-based company that aims to grow Maine glass eels to market size and sell them domestically, received a $10,000 grant from Gorham Savings Bank this week as part of the bank’s Emerging Idea Award.

American Unagi was born out of Sara Rademaker’s desire to offer an alternative for this globe-trotting local resource. Glass eels, or elvers as they are better known, are caught in Maine waters and flown to Asia where they are sold to fish farms, grown out to adult length and then, quite often, processed for sushi that returns to the United States via shipping containers.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Selling for as high as $2,600 a pound, baby eels have changed fortunes for Maine’s fishermen — and brought trouble

July 5, 2017 — On tidal rivers and streams that course through coastal Maine, where salt- and freshwater collide, people wearing headlamps are flocking to the water’s edge in the middle of the night like 19th-century miners sifting the earth for specks of gold. They’re searching for baby eels, better known as elvers, pound for pound one of the most expensive live fish in the world.

The first time Julie Keene caught $33,000 worth of baby eels in a single night, she started crying because she thought she’d done something wrong. She hauled her bucket of eels up the riverbank in the darkness and handed it off to a buyer, who tried to give her a thick wad of cash in exchange for the squirming pile of translucent sea creatures, which look like long, skinny tadpoles. At first, though, she was too frightened to take the money.

“We’re really poor and stuff. We dig clams,” she explains. “You see something like that and you go — I mean, you can’t fathom it. It’s like they told you you just won the Powerball or something. You think, Oh my god, you know, I’m gonna be able to make some money.”

Keene is smoking a cigarette and pacing the muddy banks of the Penobscot River, where everybody says the eels are running so thick at night they look like a blue oil slick in the light of the moon. It’s early evening at the end of May, and the river is a dull gray, tipped with white where the current churns up through the middle. Across the water, up on a hill, is the red-brick silhouette of downtown Bangor, Maine.

Keene, who is 58 years old, has a weathered, weary face and reddish-blond hair tucked under a baseball cap. She’s spent her entire life on the water, working as a harbormaster, clam warden, shrimper, scallop dragger, and fish cutter, among other jobs. She paces anxiously in her muddy rubber waders, stealing glances at the river, fretting that we haven’t seen any eels yet. Earlier this afternoon, she told me to drive down a private dead-end road that led to this secluded fishing spot and warned that I could not, under any circumstances, put the specific location in writing. Elver fishermen are notoriously secretive about where they fish, for reasons both competitive (why give up the map in a treasure hunt?) and cautious (you never know who might creep up behind you in the dark).

Read the full story at the Boston Globe