Canada has temporarily shut down its baby eel fishery following a string of attacks on harvesters, as well as mounting concerns over widespread poaching of the threatened fish.
Officials from the department of fisheries and oceans on Saturday announced a 45-day ban on harvesting the young eels, called elvers, in the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, shuttering the lucrative C$50m (£30m) market.
“Conflicts have escalated to violence and threats, risking the safety of harvesters and constituting a threat to the proper management and control of the fishery,” the department said in a statement. “Closing the elver fishery is a required response to address these combined risks.”
Last week, a man harvesting glass eels was allegedly assaulted with a metal pipe. Federal police in Nova Scotia charged two men over the alleged attack. Police later discovered a stun gun and shotgun after searching vehicles, as well as a shotgun discarded on the road. Indigenous leaders also believe a shooting in early April was linked to an eel fishery dispute, though police say they do not have any evidence to support the claims.
“[The fisheries department] appears to be doing little to control unlawful elver harvest activity and to make sure our Kespukwitk fishers are safe from violence,” Chief Gerald Toney of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs said in a statement. “This is unacceptable, and it is time that federal officers start taking steps to ensure the safety of all.”
The season to harvest glass eels is relatively brief, beginning in March and typically running until May as fishers frantically harvest the region’s rivers for the glistening juveniles. Coveted in China and Japan, where they are grown on farms and harvested for food, the translucent fish command a steep price, with buyers paying $5,000 a kg last year.
Canada’s endangered wildlife committee designated the species as “threatened” more than a decade ago, and the federal government has put limits on the harvest. The total allowable catch for 2023 is 9,960kg, unchanged over the last 18 years.
In recent years, however, Indigenous nations have grown frustrated that their treaty rights have not been recognised by the federal government. Canada’s supreme court has previously ruled that Indigenous peoples have a right harvest from the land and water in order to obtain a “moderate livelihood” – a term the federal government repeatedly failed to define over the years, frustrating both Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishers and leading to tense standoffs.
In 2020, officials stopped the eel harvest after Mi’kmaw fishers joined commercial licence-holders in harvesting the region’s rivers, complicating the federal department’s ability to manage the total catch.
In an attempt to remedy longstanding frustrations, the federal government has granted Indigenous communities a growing share of the commercial quota. This year, nations have been allocated 14% of the commercial harvest.
To enforce the ban fisheries officers will increase patrols at rivers and conduct more inspections at airports and border crossings.
Already this season, the department says, it has conducted nearly 750 patrols from 13 March 13 to 10 April, resulting in the seizure of 35.8kg of elvers, including 25kg at Halifax airport, worth more than C$125,000.
