The UK government’s environmental regulator has started patrols along the coast to help protect the endangered European eel from illegal poaching.
The Environment Agency’s Fisheries Enforcement Officers have started patrols along the Morecambe Bay and North Lancashire coastlines in the north-west of England to help protect the critically endangered European eel from illegal poaching.
Photo: Fishing boats in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, England
There has been a 95% decline in the number of European eels returning to rivers across the continent since the 1980s. Young eels, known as elvers, are highly prized on the black market, attracting the attention of illegal poachers who often have links to organised crime gangs.
The Environment Agency, working closely with the Northwestern Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority (NWIFCA), has started patrols to help protect the elvers during their migration.
Hiding by day and feeding by night, elvers enter the river systems to feed and grow. With the nocturnal feeding habits in mind, the partnership uses advanced night vision capable drone technology to help detect illegal poaching activity. The drones help by covering a larger stretch of coastline than previously possible by patrol boats alone.
An Environment Agency Spokesperson said: “Embracing technology and working alongside our partners from Northwestern Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority, allows us to use their detailed knowledge of our coastline during patrols, and gives us more boots on the ground, allowing us to discretely monitor targets within a wider area. If we detect illegal poaching activity, we can quickly intercept and make arrests.”
Russian export ban
Meanwhile, eels caught in British estuaries will no longer be exported to Russia after the government banned the trade. A request to dispatch millions of glass eels – young eels that develop into elvers – to a restocking project in Kaliningrad was refused by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Last year, the authorities allowed the UK’s last remaining eel trader, who has been exporting glass eels for more than 50 years, to dispatch one tonne of glass eels – representing about 3 million fish. These were caught in spring in the Severn estuary by elver fishers who have worked the area for years.
Since Brexit, it has been impossible for British eel fishers to export glass eels to restocking projects in EU countries, but a loophole made it permissible to catch and export elvers to non-EU destinations in their natural European range if they were used for conservation purposes, such as restocking lakes or rivers, the Guardian reported.
The Sargasso Sea and back
European eels breed in the Sargasso Sea, near Bermuda, from which young elvers migrate annually to reach European river estuaries for the spring tides. When they mature, eels migrate back to breeding grounds in the Sargasso Sea to reproduce for a single time before dying, and the cycle begins again.
No English or Welsh river is close to meeting its “eel escapement target” – the number of mature silver eels that successfully get out to sea.
Removing barriers such as weirs – or building fish passes around them – is one way to help eels, but moving glass eels from estuaries to suitable habitat upriver is another way to increase populations.