Baby eels worth $112K seized at Halifax airport
CBC
Authorities seized a shipment of baby eels, or elvers, at Halifax Stanfield International Airport last week as part of an ongoing investigation into the lucrative but increasingly troubled fishery.
Federal fishery officers intercepted 25 kilograms of elvers worth about $112,000 on April 5, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) said in a statement to CBC News. The seizure followed an inspection.
DFO did not say if the elvers were released live back into the ocean.
"As this matter is under investigation, no further comment will be provided at this time," spokesperson Lauren Sankey said.
Baby eels are the most valuable fish species by weight in Canada and were worth over $5,000 per kilogram in 2022.
They are flown live to Asia where they are raised to adulthood for food.
The tiny, translucent juvenile American eels, also known as glass eels, are harvested each spring from rivers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. There is also a fishery in Maine. The Maritime fishery is worth about $40 million a year.
This is not the first seizure at the Halifax airport. DFO seized 18 kilograms of elvers worth $90,000 at the Halifax airport in May 2022.
News of the recent airport seizure is the latest development in a fishery that has been marred in recent years by riverside threats and conflict among authorized harvesters and those who are not.
On Wednesday Conservative MPs Rick Perkins and Clifford Small issued a release demanding DFO stop what they call the "unprecedented levels of poaching" underway this season.
Citing reports from fishing communities, the MPs said there are unlicensed commercial harvesters operating in western and southern Nova Scotia from not only Nova Scotia but also Maine, Quebec and New Brunswick.
Perkins represents the riding of South Shore-St. Margarets in Nova Scotia, and Small, from Newfoundland and Labrador, is the party's fishery critic.
"Illegal harvesting is happening on rivers that are both designated and not designated as licensed elver fishery rivers by DFO. Illegally overfishing of elvers will reduce the sustainability of both baby eels and adult eels," Perkins and Small said in their statement.
"To date, there is no presence of DFO Conservation and Protection (C&P) enforcement on any of the rivers in this area. The lack of enforcement is encouraging poaching of this fishery…There is no excuse for the lack of DFO C&P presence, given that this region of Nova Scotia has five times as many C&P personnel per square kilometre as the remainder of the Atlantic region."
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