August 6, 2018 –Maine’s baby eel fishery has been through ups and downs in recent years, and regulators might be about to let fishermen catch a lot more of the valuable fish.
Baby eels, called elvers, can be worth more than $2,000 per pound because they are used by Asian aquaculture companies and worldwide supplies are low. Maine is the only state in the U.S. with a significant fishery for them.
Fishermen in Maine are allowed to harvest a total of 9,688 pounds of the elvers per year. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will consider increasing that by about 20 percent on Wednesday.