A recent evaluation shows that the number of eels removed by Swedish fishermen has decreased by almost 30 percent since strict conservation measures were enforced in 2007, the Swedish Board of Fisheries claims.
The bad state of the eel in Swedish waters has been obvious for many years. Millions of eel migrated up the Göta Älv river (connects to the Skagerrak at Göteborg) in the 1950’s – in 2008 some 100 did, according to the Board of Fisheries. Fifty years ago tens of thousands were found in the Nyköpingsån river south of Stockholm on the Baltic Coast – in 2008 about ten.
For three straight years scientists have found no glass eel at all in the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, the glass eel phase being the second step in the severely threatened species’ evolution, after the larvae has come drifting to coastal waters on its long journey from the Sargasso Sea.
Pointing out that the eel is “a true EU citizen” – all Europeans are fishing the same stock – the Swedish Board of Fisheries Director-General Axel Wenblad stressed that Sweden was one of the first member states to get approved a national management plan called for by the Commission in 2008.
Already in 2007 Sweden imposed new rules to protect the stock in Swedish waters, including a fishing ban that only exempted professional eel fishermen with special licenses. Less than 400 fishermen have been granted such licenses.
In the fall of 2008, EU Fisheries Ministers called for the Member States to submit national management plans for the dwindling eel stocks to the Commission by the end of that year. The pronounced goal in the regulation is that 40 per cent of the eel in EU waters will be able to return to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.
The most radical national plan was announced by Ireland, which included a total eel fishing ban. The Swedish plan did not go as far, with rules varying from water to water.
An important part of the plan, besides reduced catches, was cooperation with the private energy sector to bring down eel death in the turbines of the nation’s important huge water power plants.
In the end, the plan aimed at 90 percent survival into the silver eel stage among eel “growing up” in Swedish waters, the last phase in the species’ evolution. The goal was to be attained by 2013, an evaluation conducted annually to see if extra measures are needed.
This year’s evaluation indicates a 30 percent decrease in mortality since 2007, but the Board will still propose new restrictions, include a closure of all eel fisheries along the Swedish west coast.
On the international level, Sweden is a driving force in coordinating management of the eel stock in the Baltic Sea region, the Board of Fisheries says.
An appraisal of the EU eel management is on the Union agenda for 2012, including the controversial issue whether re-stocking can play an efficient role in improving the stock. Besides the danger of spreading disease and loss of genetic diversity implicated in the practice, scientists are not sure that re-stocked eel are able to find its way out to coastal waters, and then back to the Sargasso sea to reproduce.
In accordance with the Swedish management plan, 765,000 glass eels were set out in 2009, and more than twice that in 2010, to reach 2.5 million in 2012.
“The re-stocking debate is an important one, which has to be kept on the EU level”, Wenblad said. “At the Board of Fisheries we get prepared developing a strong basis of facts in order to influence decisions that are to be made later”.