- Baby eels might be slimy and slippery, but they’re worth more than you could imagine.
If you can make money from it (or it’s an object weird enough to be interesting), people will try to smuggle it. Even Canada, the nicest place on Earth, isn’t immune to smuggling.
Case in point, Canada’s border agency and fish and wildlife authorities recently stopped an illegal shipment of baby eels.
It was quite the haul, too. The baby eels — or elvers, as they’re called — weighed a total of 240 pounds.
Sold on the black market, they were worth up to half a million dollars. You can start seeing why someone with less than scrupulous morals might take to baby eel smuggling.
Canada’s border control agency has started cracking down hard on eel smugglers this year, and for a good reason. In 2023, the border agency embarrassed itself by stating they didn’t find any proof of illegal eel shipments, despite obvious signs of poaching.
We’re sure they were weirdly happy that they caught this one.
‘Coordinated Operation’
The elver seizure happened at the Toronto Pearson International Airport on May 15, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). It came as a part of what the DFO called a “coordinated operation” between the DFO’s National Fisheries Intelligence Service and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
We can’t now help but picture the National Fisheries Intelligence Service as the FBI but for fish. But, we digress.
Together, the DFO and CBSA identified a fishy shipment that was destined to fly to an unknown location. The DFO simply said it was “overseas.”
Within the boxes, the authorities discovered bags filled with baby eels. Altogether, the eels weighed around 240 pounds.
Considering that one pound of elvers can include anywhere between 2,000 to 4,000 elvers, that’s quite a few serpentine fish. They’re expensive, too, as the eels were expected to sell for $400,000-$500,000 on the black market.
The DFO stated that an investigation into the eel shipment is underway, but no arrests in this particular case have been made yet.
Tasty but Hard to Farm
But what makes baby eels so hugely expensive? It comes down to them being a delicacy and eels’ ridiculously complex life cycle that makes them almost impossible to breed in captivity.
First of all, the culinary status of baby eels has skyrocketed in (relatively) recent history. For a long time, they were considered fit only for fish bait.
However, in many places around the world, people have rediscovered how good elvers actually taste. So good, in fact, they’re ready to pay around $100 for a small plate of baby eels. Depending on the location, elvers can be more costly than genuine beluga caviar.
But even if the elvers aren’t eaten as babies, they’re valuable for growing into adult eels. Eels go through a complex life cycle with five distinct phases, over which they zigzag between open ocean and freshwater rivers.
The thing is, eels can only make babies in the last phase, and they have to get out to the ocean to do it. You can’t farm eels in a pool — they just don’t get in the baby-making mood.
So, eel farms rely on catching baby eels that have swum from the ocean into rivers. Catching them is a legitimate business and it can be done sustainably.
Of course, poachers don’t give a hoot or a holler about sustainability or restrictions. They catch elvers without care and sell them to shady eel farmers, earning a nice stack of money in the process.
As a result, some eel species — like the American and European eels — are now threatened. After all, they can’t produce the next generation when all the babies get snatched up.
Embarrassing Admission
Eel poaching is an undeniable fact with plenty of poachers being arrested. But the elvers, which often head to Asia, won’t get to the fish farms on their own.
Obviously, the poachers ship them there somehow. Embarrassingly for the CBSA, though, they last year had to admit they had no idea how.
Appearing at a 2023 hearing over how the CBSA was tackling eel poaching, Daniel Anson, the agency’s director of general intelligence and investigations, admitted they didn’t discover a single illegal eel shipment last year.
“We have not had any seizures of elver eels this specific year. We have effected a variety of different examinations to ensure compliance and have not found anything that was illicit or destined abroad that had been harvested illegally or the result of unreported fishing,” Anson said according to the CBC.
Of course, the DFO lawmakers weren’t very happy with the admission, considering they knew eels were being poached. We can’t be sure what happened behind the scenes, but some wrists must’ve been slapped because the CBSA has upped its game.
The DFO hasn’t officially opened elver fisheries this year, which means anyone catching them is a criminal. Consequently, there have been 154 arrests since the beginning of 2024.
In total, the DFO and CBSA have confiscated nearly 730 pounds of elvers from poachers and smugglers. Those are a bit better results than the “we didn’t find any” they got last year.