Eel catches plummet, Council of Agriculture issues a ban on glass eel fishing
With Japanese eel numbers plunging in recent years, Taiwan last year set a record price of 180 yuan per glass eel; the Council of Agriculture recently issued a ban on catching glass eels, prohibiting their capture in all counties and cities except Hualien and Taitung from March to the end of October. But many people question the measure, noting that the main catching season for glass eels is winter, so the ban has little substantive meaning. The Council of Agriculture says that, given fishermen's livelihoods, it cannot completely ban glass eel fishing and can only first regulate the early and late stages of eel fishing. However, the Fisheries Agency plans to increase penalties for glass eel smuggling and incorporate them into criminal law, and has submitted the proposal to the Ministry of Justice for drafting.
Climate change plus human catching: nine-tenths of eels gone
The eels commonly seen in Taiwan include the Japanese eel and the giant mottled eel; among them, the Japanese eel is the favorite of the Japanese and the ingredient for eel rice. The Fisheries Agency says the Japanese eel is a catadromous migratory fish species: mature eels leave the rivers where they live, swim to waters near the western side of the Mariana Islands to spawn, drift westward along the North Equatorial Current, then follow the Kuroshio northward, entering the estuaries of Taiwan, China, South Korea and Japan to continue growing.
Every year from October to March, at the mouth of the Lanyang River, hundreds of people can often be seen catching glass eels all night to "earn New Year's money." These glass eels are mainly exported to Japanese aquaculture operators. According to statistics from the Fisheries Research Institute, at the peak of the eel industry, annual output value reached as high as 560 million US dollars.
But with environmental changes and overfishing, Japanese eel numbers have plunged sharply in recent years. According to statistics by Han Yu-shan, a professor at the Institute of Fisheries Science at National Taiwan University, a few years ago Asia caught 100 tonnes of glass eels a year, but last year that fell to only 26 tonnes; Taiwan used to catch 20 tonnes a year, and over the past four years the decline has reached nine-tenths, with only 2 tonnes last year and just 1.5 tonnes this year. The price of a single glass eel soared from 10 yuan to 180 yuan, and adult eels reached as high as 1,500 yuan per kilogram.
Moonlight bright, eel shortage panic - the glass eels are gone (4) Please let the adult eels go home