March 24, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Maine’s elver fishing season opened at just after midnight on Tuesday morning chilled by the first spring snowfall and the prospect of a weak market.
Many of Maine’s ponds and rivers are ice-free after an exceptionally mild winter and some harvesters had reported seeing elvers — more properly glass eels — moving into fresh water after their long ocean journey from the Sargasso Sea, where the juvenile eels hatched. Until Monday, harvesters had been anticipating an early start to the fishing season.
“There’s been a few eels in the brooks,” Franklin elver harvester Darrell Young said Monday afternoon as he scouted the shore of Hog Bay for a spot to set his fyke net once the season opened at midnight. “Some brooks are as warm or warmer than the ocean. The snow will cool things off. Things will slow down until it warms up.”
Young is one of the founders of the Maine Elver Fishermen Association and one of the leaders in the state’s battles with federal regulators to control the fishery.
While the water will almost certainly grow warmer, longtime elver buyer Bill Sheldon said that the situation in the principal markets for Maine elvers is likely to cast a chill over the price fishermen are paid for their catch.
“The Chinese and Asian economies in general are terrible,” Sheldon said Tuesday morning as he prepared to welcome the harvesters he expected to bring him their first elver landings late that night. “It’s going to reflect on the market for sure, and on the price we’re going to get for our eels.”
Maine elvers, just a tiny segment of the world market, are shipped primarily to farms in China and Taiwan, where they grow for about a year before they are processed into kabayki. Popular throughout much of Asia, the eels are gutted, boned and butterflied, then cut into square fillets that are skewered, dipped in seasoned soy sauce and broiled.
According to Sheldon, the poor economy has cut demand for kabayaki and, consequently, for elvers. Farmers who bought elvers last year are having trouble selling the mature eels they’ve raised.
“Everyone’s cutting back and it’s showing up right now,” he said.
That could be bad news for Maine elver harvesters.