Saving Seafood

MAINE: Elver season is now underway

April 7, 2021 — The elver season is already underway, but it likely won’t heat up in earnest until temperatures ratchet up a few more degrees. 

“People ain’t catching a whole lot right now,” said Ellsworth-based Darrell Young, the co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen’s Association. 

The multimillion-dollar fishery opened on March 22, but local fishermen have reported little action while waiting for waters to warm up. 

They chalk the delay up to recent rains, which have kept the waters cool and flows fast, less than ideal conditions for the small spaghetti-like young eels that migrate upriver from the sea.   

As of April 1, a total of 315 pounds of the state’s 7,556-pound quota had been caught, according to the state Department of Marine Resources, though the agency cautioned that those figures were “extremely preliminary.”  

The Passamaquoddy Tribe fared better, catching 716 pounds of the tribe’s 1,288-pound quota, according to the DMR report.  

The elver season runs through June 7, or until the quota is met.  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

MAINE: As elver season opens, fishermen hope prices will rebound

March 26, 2021 — The commercial elver fishery opened for the 2021 season on March 22 for Maine fishermen who hold a license for the lucrative commercial market. 

And while 2020 may have been an elver season unlike any other, the 2021 season will be conducted with the same COVID-19 protocols in place. For a second consecutive year, harvesters may fish for and sell the quota of another licensed harvester provided they follow the necessary COVID-19 protocols. 

Under this rule, first introduced for the 2020 season, a license holder may fish and sell elvers for several license holders but may not “take, possess or sell” more pounds of elvers than the aggregate quota of all the license holders for whom they are fishing. 

A new rule for 2021 requires fishermen to check their nets every 16 hours so as to limit bycatch and elver mortality rates. 

“New fishermen all the time are getting into the industry and sometimes don’t check nets for three or four days,” Maine Elver Association President Darrell Young said. “When they come back, there could be 1 pound of live eels and 1 pound of dead ones.” 

And what fishermen wants to find dead elvers in their nets when prices may double from the 2020 harvester price that averaged $506 a pound? 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine’s baby eel fishermen hope for normalcy in 2021

March 22, 2021 — Maine’s baby eel fishermen are hopeful for a more stable season in 2021 as they seek one of the most valuable natural resources in New England.

The fishermen seek the eels, called elvers, so they can be sold as seedstock to Asian aquaculture companies. They are then raised to maturity and sold as food, such as sushi.

Maine has the only significant fishery for the eels in the U.S., and they sometimes fetch more than $2,000 per pound.

The season starts Monday, just over a year after the coronavirus pandemic upended the 2020 season. Prices for the eels plummeted last year because of disruption to the worldwide economy caused by the early stages of the pandemic.

The price of elvers to fishermen fell from $2,091 per pound in 2019 to $525 last year. The industry suffered because eels are almost exclusively a restaurant product, and the pandemic shuttered restaurants the world over, said Mitchell Feigenbaum, an elver dealer.

But the recovery of the economy in China, a major buyer, bodes well for this season, Feigenbaum said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times

Baby Eel Fishermen Hope for Year Free of Poaching, Shutdowns

March 25, 2019 — Maine fishermen began several weeks of taking to rivers and streams to fish for baby eels Friday, which marked the start of a high-stakes season harvesters hope isn’t interrupted by poaching concerns as it was a year ago.

Fishermen in Maine use nets to harvest baby eels, called elvers, to feed demand from Asian aquaculture companies, who use them as seed stock.

The tiny eels are the source of one of the most valuable fisheries in the country on a per-pound basis, and they were worth a record of more than $2,300 per pound last year. Maine’s home to the only significant elver fishery in the country.

Last year’s season was shut down two weeks early by state regulators after investigators found that illegal sales had caused Maine to blow past its quota for the eels. New controls on the fishery are expected to clamp down on clandestine sales, and the use of a swipe card system to record transactions remains in effect.

Darrell Young, co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen Association, said the health of the fishery also depends on members of the industry “behaving themselves” this time around.

“Buyers wanted to find their way around the swipe cards. They just made it harder for everybody else,” Young said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Maine’s elver season shut down 2 weeks early as off-book sales disrupt quota

May 24, 2018 — State regulators are shutting down the lucrative elver fishery two weeks early, after Maine Marine Patrol investigators concluded that off-the-books sales of the valuable commodity have pushed the statewide catch beyond the legal limit.

Elver dealers and fishermen are supposed to use an electronic swipe-card system that allows accurate, real-time tracking by state regulators, but some dealers are paying less than the going rate – around $2,400 per pound – for cash sales of the baby eels, which are raised to adulthood at aquaculture facilities in Asia and sold to the seafood market as a delicacy.

“The future of this lucrative fishery is now in question,” Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said in a prepared statement. “We clearly have to consider additional measures to ensure that Maine can remain compliant with (catch limits), that we can continue to protect our state’s valuable marine resources, and that we can hold accountable anyone who chooses to squander the opportunity those resources represent.”

The decision is a blow to the reputation of the fishery, said Darrell Young, co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen Association, who founded the group five years ago to push back against efforts to shut the fishery down completely. Since then, Young said he’s worked hard to drive out bad actors, and he had planned to advocate at meetings with federal regulators next month for a catch limit of more than 11,000 pounds, a reset to the 2014 level.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

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

 

Maine eel fishermen hopeful for more quota as lottery nears

January 15, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine will soon let new people into its valuable baby eel fishery for the first time in several years, and fishermen are hopeful they could soon be allowed to catch more of the wriggling critters.

The baby eels, called elvers, are often worth more than $1,000 per pound to fishermen. They’re sold to Asian aquaculture companies to be raised to maturity for use as food, such as unagi, which sometimes travels all the way back to America for sale in Japanese restaurants.

Maine limits the number of elver fishing licenses to 425. The state is holding a lottery to give away 13 licenses, which will be the first new licenses distributed since 2013, officials said. The deadline to apply is Jan. 15.

Maine fishermen are allowed to harvest a total of about 9,700 pounds of elvers in a short fishing season that happens every spring. However, the interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering tweaking the rules about the fishery, and fishermen are primed to ask for a bump in quota.

The elvers are an important resource for commercial fishermen and members of American Indian tribes, said Darrell Young, the co-director of the Maine Elver Fishermen’s Association.

“Everybody will benefit — tribal members and non-tribal,” Young said.

Maine’s the only state in the country with a significant fishery for elvers. The state’s elvers have been in high demand since foreign sources dried up in Asia and Europe. Regulators began the quota system in 2014 after a surge in harvest.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

 

MAINE: Elver season opens, but action is slow

March 30, 2017 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Elver fishing season opened on March 22 but, while Downeast stream banks are blossoming with fyke nets, at least so far, the juvenile eels that can fetch $2,000 per pound or more when the market is hot have been pretty scarce.

“Everyone set their nets to save their spots,” Darrell Young, an elver harvester from Franklin, said Monday morning. “The water’s too cold. I haven’t even started fishing yet.”

According to Young, fishermen with nets in the Union River have been landing only a few eels at a time.

“I spoke to one girl,” Young said. “She had 50 eels in her net.”

That’s not many, considering that it takes about 2,000 elvers to total a pound.

The few elvers that fishermen have been taking haven’t been of very good quality either.

“They’re weak. They don’t want to buy them,” Young said.

Weak or not, the few elvers that have been coming to market are fetching a reasonably good price.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander