‘A bucket and a net and you’re in business.’ Looming tensions in Maritime eel fishery

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans closed the fishery for the tiny, translucent fish known as elvers on April 15 after reports of violence related to unauthorized fishing.

Commercial harvesters of baby eels in the Maritimes say there’s little hope the poaching and violence that forced the closure of the lucrative fishery last season will subside in 2024.

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans closed the fishery for the tiny, translucent fish known as elvers on April 15 after reports of violence related to unauthorized fishing. There were accusations of assault and even shots fired along coastal rivers in parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The increased illegal activity comes as demand grows for the young eels, which are sold live to aquaculture operations in Asian markets such as China and Japan, where they are grown for food. Prices had reached as high as $5,000 per kilogram in 2022, partly because sources for the fish species in Europe and Asia had begun to dry up.

“We don’t see any change at all that gives us hope for a more peaceful fishery,” Stanley King, a commercial licence-holder from Nova Scotia, said in a recent interview.

“I certainly do think (next season) could end up being worse. A lot of poachers were successful last year, so they have that on their mind. As of now, the price has increased, and that is one of the things that attracts poachers to this industry, the other being a low barrier to entry — basically you only need a bucket and a net, and you’re in business.”

In an appearance last week before a House of Commons committee, King outlined the problems plaguing the fishery including the unregulated participation of Indigenous fishers — who claim a treaty right to fish — non-Indigenous poachers and what he called the growing influence of organized crime and of Chinese buyers in the illegal exporting of the fish.

“Chinese buyers readily buy black and grey market elvers from anyone who pays in cash, which has opened the door to global organized crime,” King told the committee.

The committee was also told by Rick Perkins, a Nova Scotia Conservative MP, that intimidation around the illegal fishery had grown to the point where both he and his wife received death threats. Meanwhile, during testimony in late November, the committee heard from Daniel Anson, of Canada Border Services, who said the agency did not intercept any illegal elver shipments in 2023.