Fishers say closure of lucrative baby eel fishery won't stop poaching in Maritimes

Baby eels, also known as elvers, swim in a tank after being caught in the Penobscot River, Saturday, May 15, 2021, in Brewer, Maine. Commercial harvesters of baby eels in the Maritimes say there’s little hope the poaching and violence that forced the closure of the lucrative fishery last season will subside in 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Robert F. Bukaty

HALIFAX -

Ottawa's decision to close the lucrative elver fishery on rivers in the Maritimes won't prevent illegal fishing of the baby eels, a commercial licence holder in Nova Scotia said Tuesday.

Stanley King said the federal Fisheries Department has moved too slowly to put in place enforcement measures that could have allowed for a 2024 season.

"The poaching will continue unabated as it has for the previous two closures," King predicted in an interview Tuesday. "The government should know by now that closures don't work, especially when they are not enforced."

He added that only 60 arrests resulted from 1,400 complaints made last year to the federal Fisheries Department. In announcing this season's closure the department said fisheries officers would enforce the ban and had arrested five people last week for unauthorized harvesting of the young, translucent eels.

Federal Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier officially closed the fishery on Monday, saying past confrontations indicated an "immediate threat" to public safety and management of the fishery. She also cited the need to conserve the American eel species, which was designated as threatened in 2012 by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

King said commercial fishers were not surprised by the federal minister's "unfortunate" decision. They believe her mind was made up even before she asked for input from them and from Indigenous licence holders. He noted that a review by the department has been underway since January 2023.

"They've had 14 months to do it and we've been involved in the process," he said. "They have moved shockingly slow."

Last year, the fishery was closed on April 15 after reports of violence related to unauthorized fishing, as well as accusations of assault and even shots fired. The fishery was also shut down in 2020.

Susanna Fuller, of marine conservation organization Oceans North, said the closure is needed to allow time to introduce stronger regulations and sustainability practices. She acknowledged that neither Indigenous fishers with a right to earn a moderate livelihood from the fishery nor commercial licence holders will be happy with the decision. "But I think it's necessary until there's a way forward that ensures safety on the river and conservation for the stock," Fuller said.

She said the Fisheries Department also has to work with Canada Border Services to clamp down on illegal exports of live eels, which are driving the poaching problem on coastal rivers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The tiny eels are typically sold live to aquaculture operations in China and Japan, where they are grown for food, and in 2022 prices reached as high as $5,000 per kilogram. The fishery is worth about $45 million annually, according to the industry.

"It is the most wicked fisheries problem I have ever witnessed in my life, because literally you can go and buy a dollar store net and you can make thousands of dollars," Fuller said.

She added that more support is also needed to allow Indigenous fishers to implement the monitoring tools to bolster self-management of moderate livelihood fisheries.

But in a statement Tuesday, the six chiefs of New Brunswick's Wolastoqey Nation said federal fisheries officials had favoured non-Indigenous commercial fishers at the expense of its nation's right to fish.

The chiefs said the way forward is an Indigenous-led fishery based on local systems and values that include monitoring, accurate population counts and habitat assessments. "We continue to advocate that there is a path towards a safe, sustainable, and accessible fishery which respects our inherent Aboriginal and treaty-protected rights," the chiefs said.

In a letter Monday to his federal counterpart, Nova Scotia Fisheries Minister Kent Smith called the closure "an abandonment of duty" in the fishery's management. But In an interview Tuesday, Smith expressed hope that a one-year ban could bring positive change.

 "It's my understanding they want to put a few different measures in place with respect to traceability (of catch) before they are ready to call an opening for 2025," Smith said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 12, 2024.