In the late 1960’s I spent an afternoon in a boat on Lake Ontario with a professional eel catcher. Now, they’re extinct… eel-catchers, I mean, not eels. “Not lovely, are they?” he said, taking an eel out of his net.
There are 700 to 1,000 eel species, depending on taxonomy and nomenclature issues too technical discuss here. Only American eels (Anguilla rostrata), among the world’s most widely distributed fish species, occurs in North American fresh water. They were common then, but are now endangered. Moral: the economic value of the species offers no protection against endangerment that can lead to extinction and also the end of the profession that contributed to that extinction.
The economic value of the species offers no protection against endangerment that can lead to extinction and also the end of the profession that contributed to that extinction.
Overall, eel-catching for the market is still a booming business. Not all eel species, including the 15 species belonging to genus Anguilla, for which there is strong culinary demand, are endangered everywhere. But, they cannot meet market demand.
Short-finned eels (A. australis) occur in eastern Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. Last year, over 143 tons (315,261 lbs), some from aquafarms, were shipped alive in polystyrene containers to North America, Europe, and Asia – an animal welfare concern, as well as a conservation concern.
Worse, there is a species similar to both the American eel and the short-finned eel, and, in fact, the widely distributed European eel (A. anguilla), which is critically endangered but in high demand by the fishing industry. That species is called the New Zealand longfin eel and it lives in fresh water only in New Zealand. There, increasing the confusion, the Australian longfin eel (A. reinhardtii) has been introduced. The New Zealand endemic is called the New Zealand long-finned eel (A. dieffenbachii).
All Anguilla eels hatch out of eggs laid and fertilized in oceans far from shore. The spawning grounds of both the American and the European eel overlap in the Sargasso Sea, near Bermuda. Eel larvae, nothing like adults, travel far and wide for years before entering the appropriate freshwater river and lake systems where they mature. Adults migrate back into ocean water to start the cycle over again.
Anguilla eels are declining worldwide. Some species or populations do better than others. Because of their physical similarity and shared habitats, where two or more kinds are found they tend to be “managed” by the fishing industry as a single species. New Zealanders, for example, can’t catch the declining short-finned eel without catching the much rarer New Zealand longfin species.
Eels don’t evoke the sympathetic concerns enjoyed by pandas, elephants, orcas, or California condors, and don’t become “poster species” for conservation organizations. But, they are still part of the ecological whole, with the same forces arrayed against them that often compromise life for the better-known and much-beloved endangered species.
The fishing industry wants us to think it is scientifically managed, but lumping species together, especially those about which little is known, is not scientific. It would help if we did what I did all those years ago, and stop eating them. If no other reason to stop eating eels makes sense, if we don’t stop, the eel catchers in the rest of the world will experience what my eel-catching companion of long ago experienced – the loss of his profession.
Are eels lovely? Yes, actually. I think they are beautiful in their mysterious complexity and wondrous ways, and oh do I hate to see them go!
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
