Three elver fishermen from Bridgwater have been fined and ordered to pay costs of £2,500 after being caught using illegal nets on the River Parrett.
All three cases were brought by the Environment Agency.
· Mark Miller, 45, from Orchard House, Kings Drive, Weston Zoyland, Bridgwater, was fined £170 and ordered to pay £740 costs and had his net confiscated by the Environment Agency and destroyed by the courts.
· Paul Billing, 56, of 10 Seversham Avenue, Bridgwater, was fined £450 and ordered to pay £500 costs. His net is also to be destroyed.
· David Hayward, 58, of 113 Huntworth Lane, Bridgwater, was fined £240 and ordered to pay £400 costs. His fishing equipment was seized and will be destroyed.
Fisheries bailiffs were on routine patrol near Bridgwater when they saw the three men using elver nets.
When examined the net were found to be illegal in ways that contravened the elver fishing byelaws.
‘The use of over-sized nets gives fishermen an unfair advantage over their law-abiding colleagues and enables them to catch additional elvers thereby reducing the number of young eels escaping upstream and depriving natural predators of a valuable source of food,’ said Richard Dearnley for the Environment Agency.
As the government body responsible for enforcing and regulating fisheries, the Environment Agency regularly inspects sites where elver fishing takes place. It is also responsible for issuing licences which cost £65 per year.
Around 200 fishermen are licensed to catch elvers in Somerset after the baby eels have journeyed from the Sargasso Sea off the Gulf of Mexico and made their way up the River Parrett.
Elver fishing has become a lucrative activity with elvers currently fetching around £250 per kilogram. The market fluctuates and prices have previously risen as high as at £525 per kilogram.
Appearing before Bridgwater magistrates, the three fishermen admitted fishing for elvers with a prohibited instrument in contravention of the National Eel Fishery Byelaws 2004 and the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act of 1975.
