Can an International Treaty Save the American Eel?
Overfishing and other threats have depleted populations of this iconic species. A new proposal to restrict international trade under CITES could offer them a lifeline.
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The sign in front of the van parked just off Route 1 in Lincoln County, Maine, displayed a simple message in big, hand-written letters: “Eels. $2,000/lb.”
The man in the van wasn’t selling. He was buying.
I pulled my car over, hoping to interview anyone involved in Maine’s lucrative trade in “glass eels” or “elvers” — two of the earliest life stages of the American eel (Anguilla rostrata). The man got out of the van and pulled back his jacket to reveal a holstered gun on his hip.
I left without the interview.
The gun didn’t surprise me. It was 2012, and Maine media that year carried frequent reports of the danger wrapped up around the eel trade. While catching and selling baby eels remains legal in the state, illegal activity that year ran rampant as eel prices soared. Some people poached the eels rather than follow state harvest regulations. Others tried to burglarize fishermen’s properties to take their catches or rob cash-heavy dealers. Reports of violence were frequent.
All for a transparent baby eel, just a couple of inches long.
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But little eels are big business. In 2012 in Maine, an estimated 21,611 pounds of glass eels were harvested, valued at over $43 million. (Individual glass eels weigh less than a third of a gram.)
The real money isn’t in Maine, though. Once collected, the baby eels are shipped to Asia — primarily China — where they’re raised in grow ponds until they reach adulthood and full size. After that they’re shipped to Japan, where they’re a culturally important delicacy.
Japan’s own eel species, A. japonica, was declared endangered in 2014, a few years after the European eel, A. anguilla, was declared critically endangered. That’s one of the reasons why the market has turned to Maine — one of the few places in the United States where one-common American eels can still be found — as well as Canada and the Caribbean.
No one knows how many American eels remain. The IUCN Red List classifies the species as endangered, although attempts to protect them under the U.S. Endangered Species Act have, to date, failed.
One thing is certain, though: There aren’t as many as there once were. In 2023 the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission concluded the species was “depleted” from a fisheries perspective, “meaning it is at or near historically low levels due to a combination of historical overfishing, habitat loss, food web alterations, predation, turbine mortality, environmental changes, toxins and contaminants, and disease.” The problems start in the eels’ spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea and persist throughout their complex life cycles and migrations.
That assessment plays a key role this month in attempts to put some controls on the eel trade through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, better known as CITES. A proposal submitted by the European Union would, if passed, place American and Japanese eels (along with all other “lookalike” species) on CITES Appendix II, which would require any international imports or exports of the species to carry permits showing it was legal, sustainable, and traceable.
Japan has historically lobbied against controls on the trade, arguing that it’s important to the country’s culture.
But Dr. Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy for Wildlife Conservation Society, offers a counterargument: Trade restrictions will protect both the eels and their cultural values (for Japan as well as many Native American Tribes and First Nations).
“If you don’t protect the eel, you will one day turn around and Japanese people will talk about when they used to eat eel,” she says.
A CITES listing won’t “magically solve all the problems for eels,” Lieberman adds. But as with efforts to protect sharks and other species from overconsumption, it could give them more of a chance to recover from their collective pressures.
And that’s worked for hundreds of species currently regulated by CITES. “If we didn’t have the treaty, a lot of species would be gone,” Lieberman says.
The CITES vote will take place in the next few days. If it passes, trade restrictions would go into effect in June 2027.
Either way there’s still a lot we need to do for and learn about the American eel — and the other species in its family — if we hope to protect them.
“We need the science to know what level [of trade] is sustainable,” says Lieberman. “We need the science to be supported to assess their populations in the wild. And we need enforcement to make sure that Illegal stuff isn’t leaving the U.S. and Canada and isn’t arriving in Japan and China.”
That’s a big set of tasks to help a group of species most people have never seen — let alone studied — in the wild.
But embracing eel conservation might pay off. Some researcher suggest American eels’ cultural values, unique natural history, vulnerability to pollutants, and other characteristics could make them good “flagship” species for freshwater conservation. That, in turn, could help motivate people to protect habitat, reduce pollution, restore connectivity (especially by removing dams), and help all manner of aquatic species and the terrestrial species that depend on freshwater systems — including humans.
Will this CITES vote be the first step toward that goal? One thing is certain: If we don’t act, we could soon find an eel-shaped hole in cultures around the world and in the American ecosystem.
Author’s note: Expect several more articles about the trade in American eels — and efforts to protect or study them — in the months ahead.
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Previously in The Revelator:
This Unsung Aquatic Hero Could Get a Big Boost From Dam Removals
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