Taking action to ensure eel survival

EEL stocks in Ireland and Europe are now so depleted as to be under threat, and radical action is needed to ensure the survival of the species.

That’s according to the EU which has come up with a management plan aimed at reducing eel mortality and increasing eel numbers in rivers.

The Irish government has submitted proposals to ban all eel fishing in our waters to the European Commission for approval. Minister of State Seán Power says the ban must be implemented from July 1 next, if approved by the EU.

The European eel stock is now “outside safe biological limits”, according to a recent report by International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, and focus is on conservation, adds Mr Power.

Eel fishermen here have reacted angrily, claiming a combination of factors, including hydro-electricity and pollution, has led to stock depletion.

Several years ago, the European Commission directed member states to draw up plans, based on ensuring 40% of eels escape to the sea for breeding purposes.

Ireland’s plan proposes a ban on commercial eel fishing and closing the market. The plan also aims to improve water quality of eel habitats, to take measures to ensure upstream migration of juvenile eel at barriers and to mitigate the impact of hydro-electric power.

About 100 tonnes of eel are harvested in the state by some 295 eel licence holders, and the total value of the catch is between €500,000 and €750,000. The ban will apply on the Shannon, Corrib and Lough Erne, but will not affect the island’s largest eel fishery on Lough Neagh.

The eel fishermen claim they were only invited to sit on a government working group when the key decision had already been taken. But the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources insists there was full public consultation.

Eel fishermen will be able to tender for trapping and transport on the Shannon, and the Central Fisheries Board is establishing a diversification scheme for affected catchers.

Mr Power speaks of the “absolute necessity” to conserve remaining stocks and believes it will take a long time to get eel stocks back to former levels.

The sole surviving major wild eel fishery in the continent is in Lough Neagh. Eel is a delicacy in many European countries and the annual output from the lough is about 700 tonnes, with most exported to Holland.

The natural supply of baby eels, known as elvers, has dramatically declined. The situation became so bad that the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Co-operative Society, which regulates the industry, was forced to start buying millions of elvers from England.

That move strengthened the North’s industry, which employs about 300 fishermen.

It is claimed that nobody knows why there has been such a serious decline in elver numbers.

In 1977, more than 19 million arrived in Lough Neagh: by 2001, the figure was just 945,000.

Fishing for silver eels is dependent on the weather conditions, as they do not migrate in daylight, or strong moonlight. They originate in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic and are taken by the Gulf Stream to the waters of Ireland and Britain.

However, some believe global warming has affected the Gulf Stream’s direction and steered the elvers away from the Irish coast.

Eels begin life as transparent, leaf-shaped larvae in the Sargasso Sea and drift easily on the ocean current. Once in coastal waters, they change shape, become slim and tiny and migrate upstream to freshwater. The reproduce on returning to sea.

European eels inhabit the rivers of the north Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean Seas. They can survive in any type of water — salt, fresh, still, or flowing — and can also travel over land. The live at the bottom of the water under stones, mud and in crevices.

Solitary, nocturnal creatures, they begin to migrate downstream and cross the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea, after many years in freshwater.