CCB Briefing – the facts about eel

CCB • October 29, 2017

What you need to know and understand about the eel, Anguilla anguilla

Facts about eel (Anguilla anguilla)

  • There is only one single stock of European eel
  • Eel is a commercial species under the CFP and MSY objective
  • Eels grow very old making management extremely challenging. Example: old adult eels we see now can be the result of parents potentially born in the 1970s!
  • Eel cannot be farmed, all eels in aquaculture etc are wild eels taken as juveniles
  • we cannot “enhance” spawning by other means than securing an increase of out-migrating adult eels
  • One eel saved in one river does not automatically mean a return of 100 more to same river – the eels may increase somewhere else.
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