In part two of the eel saga, I take a more detailed look at how the pieces of the trade fit together, and what’s being done to combat it.

This is my second blog about the illegal trade of eel between Europe and Asia. In the first I wrote about the ecological plight of the eel and the scale of the trade. You can read that post here.

In January 2016, David Baker, an ecologist at The University of Hong Kong’s Swire Institute of Marine Science received an unusual package: a frozen, lumpy mass of unknown fish seized at Hong Kong airport. His job was to carry out DNA analysis on the samples to find out what they were. But in solving the mystery, he also uncovered a crime: the fish were European Eel, a species that should never have reached Hong Kong, because trading these animals between Europe and Asia is completely illegal.

“There have been four other confiscated shipments since January this year”, says Baker, whose analysis, done in collaboration with Florian Stein, a fish ecologist from the University of Potsdam in Germany, has helped government authorities to intercept the smuggled eel at the Hong Kong International Airport. Otherwise, the fish may have gone unidentified. “The difficulty for our government agents, these eels when they’re in this stage, they’re not distinctive enough to be identified at the species level,” says Baker, so DNA analysis is the only way to prove their origin.

Smugglers typically transport the small, transparent baby fish—called glass eels—by cramming hundreds into water-filled plastic bags that are then packed into personal baggage, and carried live from Europe into China (the samples Baker tested had been frozen by authorities). If a smuggler successfully gets through customs, the eels are taken to aquaculture farms to grow and be sold as adults. Smugglers who are caught, however, face severe punishments. “The maximum penalty for violation [of the eel regulations that prohibit trade] is a fine of $500,000 and imprisonment for one year,” says a spokesperson from Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Conservation and Fisheries Department (AFCD).

Yet, taking this risk can also reap a substantial reward. At the glass eel stage the species fetches about EUR 1,200-1,500 per kilogram on arrival in Asia. And when the fish are sold as larger adults, traders can make a profit of several thousand euros on each kilogram of glass eels originally purchased.

What’s legal, and what’s contraband?

It wasn’t always this way, as I explained in my earlier blog: once, European Eel were freely traded and consumed between Europe and Asia, until in 2010 the international trade was outlawed, due to the eels’ plummeting population. However, trade was allowed to go on legally within the European Union, and today eel continue to be fished from hotspots like France and Spain and sold to other European nations.

According to FranceAgriMer, a French organisation that provides official data about the agricultural and fisheries sectors, on average the EU market purchases an estimated 15 to 20 tons of the fish for consumption, which are sold on to aquaculture plants to be farmed as food. Another 12 to 15 tons are typically bought for restocking; these are fish that are supposed to be placed back into waterways across Europe as part of a scheme to replenish local populations of this critically endangered fish.

And yet, up to 20 tons of glass eel have been illegally leaving the EU annually since the 2010 ban on international trade began, transported along a complex and mysterious underground network through Europe to Asia. In recent years, “more eels are leaving Europe illegally than are being consumed legally,” says Andrew Kerr, chairman of the Sustainable Eel Group (SEG), an organisation made up of scientists, conservationists and fishing industry representatives working together to aid the recovery of the European Eel across its range. “All those eels that are being caught and illegally traded should really be used for restocking, and moved all over Europe.”

Since 2010, many arrests and eel seizures across Europe have revealed a piecemeal picture of the network, and it’s become clear that criminals are operating at a regional scale: the trade involves countries including France, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, which variously act as source or transit countries.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A close-up of freshly-caught glass eels. Photograph: Andrew Kerr

A large-scale, lucrative trade

The scale of this problem has grabbed the attention of the European Commission, which in February published its EU Action Plan Against Wildlife Trafficking, a document that underlines the importance of intensifying enforcement to reduce illegal wildlife trade into and out of the EU. More than anything else, the EU is typically recognised as a transit region for trafficked goods—but the new report highlights an important exception: the huge quantities of smuggled European Eel that arise from the region.

“There are large volumes of eels that are smuggled out of Europe, that’s one of the biggest problems for us in the EU,” Commission sources told me. The report details several arrests, including the 2011-2012 Spanish case of smugglers who were caught trying to carry 1,500 kilograms of glass eels to Asia—a quantity that would have been worth EUR 1.6 million in China. That seizure led to the arrests of 14 people. Far from being opportunistic, the trade appears to be run by organised criminals, the Commission sources added.

“Even if you have a seizure within the EU, it’s difficult to find out who’s behind it,” says Werner Gowitzke, seconded national expert on environmental crime at Europol, the EU’s official law enforcement agency, which is lending its support to the investigation, and will be working with law enforcement in various countries to uncover the perpetrators of this expansive illegal trade.

To begin to untangle its web, we have to return to France where most of Europe’s eel come from, and which makes it the jumping off point for illegal trade.

The French eel fishery

Europe’s main eel fisheries lie in Spain and France, but “the only country that has the capacity to catch tens of tons is France,” says Kerr, since it receives the bulk of glass eels migrating into its rivers—three quarters of the European total. Annually, the country imposes a catch quota on its fishermen, split by region, which limits the amount of eels that can be caught. This year, it’s set at just over 57 tons, and already the catch has reached over 41 this fishing season, which will continue running into May.

That amount, though legal, worries the SEG because the number exceeds the total FranceAgriMer estimate for European consumption. (I explored this conundrum, and its potential role in driving the illegal trade, in the previous post.) In other words, says Kerr, “the quota is not set in relation to a market.” To cast further suspicion over these numbers, there are recent reports (obtained over email) from buyers in some European countries that not enough eel are available for restocking efforts, despite the ample 21 tons of the 41 total caught that the French fishery has set aside precisely for that purpose—an amount that also happens to exceed Europe’s estimated market demand for restocking.

This raises the possibility that a sizeable chunk of the legal catch is being diverted from the European legal market this year into the illegal trade, and ultimately Asia, says Kerr. SEG is carrying out an independent survey of the trade (yet to be published), which estimates that this figure is in excess of 20 tons.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eels being funnelled back into the river as part of a restocking effort in Charente, France. Photograph: Andrew Kerr

All this begs an answer to the question: who is responsible for the illicit business? Riverside poaching and opportunistic criminals are unlikely to account for the tens of tons that routinely find their way to Asia each year—a feat that would require impressive levels of coordination and considerable resources to transport live eels, Kerr points out. “To shift 20 tons can’t be done in a piecemeal way.” Certain French authorities seem to share his thinking.

Poachers are typically responsible for the illicit trade of small quantities, says Eric Sabot, from the National Office of Water and Aquatic Environments, the French river police. But, he says, “bigger volumes of some hundred kilograms, representing strong sums—here it is about organised traffic.”

Clearly, the scale and intensity of the trade stretches beyond the realm of fishermen into the world of organised criminals. But who exactly is co-ordinating it, and which countries are complicit, are both questions without official answers.

Who’s buying the eel?

Where the trail goes murky in France is at the point of sale. What’s known is that after French fishermen catch the eel, they’re sold on to eel collectors, and then to wholesalers who store the live eel in tanks packed into vast eel holding stations. From here, the fish are traded. But who exactly these millions of squirming glass eels go to is widely unknown.

According to sources in the French administration (who asked not to be named) although information about buyers is recorded and tracked, it doesn’t reach the public domain because it contains private trade information: “Generally it’s not public data…basically, it’s commercial private data.”

From Kerr’s perspective, this is a red flag. France is a signatory to a 2007 European Council Regulation for the recovery of eels that legally binds countries to ensure the full traceability of all eel being exported from their territory. But Kerr’s concern is that keeping the information private might be used as a veil to obscure the onward path of the fish.

Official requests for data have frequently been rebuffed, according to Kerr—as was the case for the ICES Working Group on Eel, a scientific review body that tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain trade data that would have helped them piece together information about the eel supply chain. “Perhaps the logic of protecting ‘trade information’ from competition would be sound and reasonable if there was no doubt that the produce was clean and there was no or little subsequent likelihood of the trade being sold on illegally,” Kerr says.

Indeed, once out of France, the eel appear to rapidly enter the illegal network. Spain is emerging as a key player: several of the recent arrests in Hong Kong have involved people travelling to Asia from Spain, and some of the biggest eel seizures have occurred in the country as well. French authorities, for their part, aren’t blind to France’s role as a provider: “We know that France is one of the countries that is very much involved because of the number of glass eels coming into our country,” says Marie-Claire Lhenry, an environmental advisor for a branch of the National Gendarmerie, France’s military police service that is also investigating the trade. “That’s why we can’t ignore it.”

For Kerr, the pivotal question remains precisely who the eel are being sold to. By his reasoning, if France wants to ensure the complete transparency of its eel trade, it will have to make sure it can answer that question. “If we find the regulation is not being implemented, we will challenge that inertia and non-compliance,” Kerr says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An eel fishing boat from the Arzal fishery where the SEG sustainable eel standard has been met. Photograph: Andrew Kerr

Three steps to saving the species

Tell the average person about the illicit eel trade, and the response is often “but why eel?” The assumption is that this seemingly bland, familiar fish can’t possibly warrant such desire and demand that it sparks a blackmarket trade. But the reality for the humble eel is one that demonstrates, perhaps, that no earthly resource is safe: if it becomes a desirable commodity, for whatever complex mix of factors, it can be rapidly swept up into a voracious and unflinching trade.

Luckily for European eel, however uncharismatic it might appear to the rest of the world, it’s gathered a loyal team of defenders. In Hong Kong, Baker and Stein’s DNA analysis work will continue to expose incoming criminals. In France, fishermen, whose economic interests are ultimately damaged by the trade, are calling for better traceability of eel and many are turning to sustainable fishing to preserve their craft.

Some, like a fishery in France’s Arzal region, are already qualifying for SEG’s sustainable eel standard, which is like the eel equivalent of a Marine Stewardship Council certification, designed to recognise forward-thinking fisheries that promote eel conservation.

And in the background, the Sustainable Eel Group is trying to uncover just how much of the legally caught eel actually reaches European markets. By default, that should reveal a solid estimate on how much of the annual legal catch is being illegally diverted to Asia instead. No doubt, when it’s published in coming months, that figure will spark a fresh wave of debate.

Until then, speaking on behalf of the many scientists, conservationists, and industry professionals working to solve this seemingly intractable problem, Kerr assures, “We will not be silent.”