Federal Fisheries Department ponders new regulations ahead of 2024 elver season

Baby eels, also known as elvers, swim in a tank in this picture. (Source: THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Robert F. Bukaty)

HALIFAX -

New regulations aimed at disrupting illegal fishing and ending violence in the East Coast baby eel fishery are under consideration for the 2024 season.

According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans website, federal officials are proposing a new system of possession and export licences to track the tiny fish, known as elvers, from the time they are caught to their shipment overseas.

"There will be separate licences for possession and export," the website says. "Depending on your activities in the supply chain, you may need both."

An elver possession licence would be required for holding facility operators, fish buyers, processors and most transporters. Its conditions could set out such things as where and when elvers can be possessed, how they are stored at holding facilities and how catch records and other information are to be provided to the department.

Among the export licence conditions could be a requirement to notify the department when a container of elvers will be packaged for export so officials can verify the weight and contents.

"There will be no exemptions for export licences," the department says.

A deadline for industry comment on the regulations, which are expected to be in place before the season opens in late March, expired on Wednesday.

Stanley King, a commercial licence-holder from Nova Scotia, called the proposed requirements "a start" but said a number of other measures will be needed to make a dent in illegal fishing.

"The call that ended yesterday was very narrow in scope," he said in an interview Thursday. "Quite frankly, it's not encouraging. It's a good first step out of many steps that are needed, and it won't make any difference in poaching during the 2024 season."

King is part of a group of commercial fishers who want more enforcement action and stiffer penalties for the upcoming season. Federal officials closed the 2023 fishery on April 15 after reports of violence and intimidation along coastal rivers in parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

King appeared before a House of Commons committee earlier this month where he outlined the problems plaguing the fishery including what he said is the growing influence of organized crime and of Chinese buyers in the illegal exporting of the fish.

He said the illegal activity is stoked by growing demand for the young eels, which are sold live to aquaculture operations in Asian markets such as China and Japan. In 2022 prices reached as high as $5,000 per kilogram as sources for the at-risk fish species began to dry up in Europe and Asia.

East Asian customs data used in a report published last month in the journal Marine Policy indicate that in 2022, imports from the Americas accounted for 89 per cent of all live eel imports into the region, with Hong Kong being the primary importer.

Co-authored by Hiromi Shiraishi, a researcher at Tokyo's Chuo University, the report says Hong Kong imported 43.3 tonnes of live eel from Canada that year. That is more than four times Canada's total annual catch quota, which has been set at just under 10 tonnes since 2005.

"If the data is accurate those numbers are quite alarming," King said.

In an email, Shiraishi said breeding eels is not yet commercially viable, meaning most eels consumed began life as wild elvers.

The Canadian species, known as American eel, was designated as threatened in 2012 by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

Shiraishi said most diners have no idea what eel species they are eating or where it comes from. Nor are they aware of the problems caused by the illegal trade in countries like Canada. She would like to see that change.

She said there is no data to establish where the eels caught in Canada, or elsewhere, are eventually consumed once they have grown big enough. "To raise awareness, we believe it is important at first to let the society know what they are eating, so we are planning to do DNA analysis of eel products sold in Japan next year," she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2023.

For more Nova Scotia news visit our dedicated provincial page.