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.
Gdańsk Common Message
The European Commission's evaluation confirms what environmental NGOs across Europe have long argued: the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)'s challenge is not its design, but its implementation.
