Global trade controls could stop the $4.8-billion eel smuggling crisis

Sheldon Jordan is co-founder of the Canadian Environmental Crime Research Network. He previously was director-general of wildlife enforcement for Environment Canada and is a former Interpol official.

Yves Goulet is an invited professor at the University of Ottawa, a former director of intelligence for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and past chair of Interpol’s Fisheries Crime Working Group.

Under the cover of night, eels migrate up rivers in the Maritimes, fly into Canada on planes from Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica, or find their way into the Port of Vancouver, hidden in shipping containers from Europe and Asia. Demand is high and the trade is increasingly risky.

Eel prices have soared, creating jobs and tasty dishes, but the boom has also fuelled a destructive criminal market. Unless Canada and 184 other countries adopt stronger international trade controls at a UN meeting later this year, this gold rush could collapse – as it already has elsewhere.

Europol estimates illicit eel trafficking was worth about $4.8-billion in 2024. That black market undermines conservation efforts and lawful fishers alike.

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All market eels originate in the wild. Scientists have never observed their ocean-spawning process, but what we do know is that larvae drift for months or years before arriving at coasts as translucent, centimetres-long “glass eels” or elvers. Fishers scoop these juveniles from shallow rivers, with most then flown to Asian aquaculture facilities. A kilogram of elvers (roughly 3,500 individuals) can fetch up to $5,000 for legal harvesters, and a lot more to overseas traffickers.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) sets quotas to protect wild stocks, as eels cannot yet be bred commercially in captivity. The skyrocketing prices, however, have encouraged a parallel illegal fishery. Each spring, large numbers of unlicensed harvesters overwhelm permit holders and fisheries officers along streams in Atlantic Canada. Reports of threats and intimidation are common. DFO has closed elver season early several times in recent years, and cancelled the 2024 season entirely, citing overfishing concerns and violence.

Organized-crime involvement in the eel trade is frequently reported to DFO, and illicit catches are sometimes mixed with legal stock, complicating efforts to trace origins and protect populations. The American eel range extends from northern South America to Greenland. Unlike salmon, they do not return to a single natal stream; ocean currents can carry their offspring to very different coasts. The descendants of eels from Canada may settle in streams in Haiti, Venezuela or the United States. Shared populations make co-ordinated management essential.

Caribbean countries often lack the resources to deter poaching. Traffickers in the region sell poached elvers at prices that undercut lawful fishers, including Canadians. Our country is a global hub for the elver trade: in addition to exports of domestic legal and illegal elvers, more than 70 per cent of eel shipments from the Caribbean – much of it illicitly caught – transit through Canada en route to Asia.

Canada is also a major market for eel products. In the last seven years, authorities in Vancouver and Toronto confiscated nearly 200 tonnes of eel meat from Asia, much of it endangered European eel fraudulently declared as the unregulated American eel. Most was destined for sushi, meaning many Canadians may have unknowingly consumed endangered species.

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History offers a warning: intense overfishing to satisfy aquaculture demand for elvers depleted Asian eel stocks in the 1970s and then collapsed European eel populations by 90 per cent in the 1990s and 2000s. Fishing pressure has shifted to the American eel. Canada and other range states risk repeating the pattern.

There is an opportunity to reduce this illegal trade. This fall, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) will consider a proposal to regulate international shipments of all freshwater eel species. The goal is not a ban but stronger controls: export levels would be set by scientific assessments, while permits for every international shipment of live eels and eel meat would be required, proving products are legally and sustainably sourced.

Today, only the European eel is listed under CITES. Eel species look so similar that border officers cannot reliably tell them apart without DNA tests, which can cost up to $10,000 per container. Listing all eel species under CITES would close loopholes traffickers exploit, improve data for managing shared stocks, and make border inspections more effective. Destination countries would also be required to control imports, adding another safeguard.

Stronger trade controls would protect Canadian commercial fishers and Indigenous harvesters by reducing unfair competition from an illicit supply, while supporting long-term sustainability. Some countries oppose extending protections beyond the European eel, but Canada and other countries must heed the depletion lessons from Asia and Europe, and back the enhanced CITES measures for all eels.