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Return of the eel


Anderoo

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Overfishing is good short term it raises the price ,long term its a disaster but those that licence elver fishing and those that buy them probably dont care about long term

Believe NOTHING anyones says or writes unless you witness it yourself and even then your eyes can deceive you

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The data on which the eel population estimates are based comes from across the whole of the EU. Overfishing one river does not specifically reduce future elver catches in that particular river and local abundance is not necessarily a good reflection of the state of the entire stock.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I read an article relating to last year's massive elver run on the Severn and the numbers were being measured by the million and the weights in tonnes in single days. I think 4 million were obtained in a single night. The same article also suggested that the run on the Severn alone, was the biggest in the last 30 years and it also suggested that most of the data collected on elver numbers was obtained from waters where eels were fished for on a commercial basis, which doesn't account for waters where eel numbers aren't fished for.

 

Bear in mind that elvers are possibly 3 years old already, by the time they arrive in the UK. Do we know what the mortality rate for the ones that didn't get this far is? I suspect it's a few anyway and these eggs aren't produced spontaneously. There must be more than a few adults turning up to breed and that breeding took place just when we talking about the almost certain demise of the eel. Just when the experts were telling us it was the end for the eel, they were mysteriously breeding in huge numbers somewhere. Their massive numbers of offspring survivors just hadn't turned up yet.

 

I realise that this relates to a single river but it would also appear that it could take a lifetime's worth of data to paint anything remotely like an accurate picture of the state of eel populations.

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Good post

 

Over the last ten or twelve years I have reported large elver runs from a Sussex river on three occasions. Those were when I happened to be by the river at the right time - some years I didn't report an elver run simply because I was not there to see one (which doesn't mean there wasn't one of course)

 

However, each time I reported a run I was told by the self-appointed saviours of the eel that this was an exception, and didn't I know that an eel took eighty years to mature, blah, blah. (that last snippet now disproven)

 

It seems to me that eel stocks are assured even if only one run takes place per decade - when the elvers run, even in a small river, the numbers going up-river are massive.

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All,

 

I know the problem. It's not fishermen - commercial or recreational.

 

It's whales. Since whales were listed as endangered species populations have increased dramatically. Whales eat eels from Europe (and the UK) on their return trip to (that sea, I can't spell it) to spawn. Now if we would just increase quotas on whale harvest there would be a lot more eels. Simples

 

Phone

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  • 2 weeks later...

Whales....loads of them up here too. Need a big boot (that's 'trunk' where you come from Phone) to move them though... :doh:

¤«Thʤ«PÔâ©H¤MëíTë®»¤

 

Click HERE for in-fighting, scrapping, name-calling, objectional and often explicit behaviour and cakes. Mind your tin-hat

 

Click HERE for Tench Fishing World forums

 

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"I envy not him that eats better meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do. I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do"

...Izaac Walton...

 

"It looked a really nice swim betwixt weedbed and bank"

...Vagabond...

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Any bets on what it would take for the ridiculous ban on anglers taking one for the pot will be lifted and when if ever it will happen? Somehow I think we will see them being taken by the bulk tanker full commercially and it still won't ever happen.

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About as likely as a lift on the livebaiting ban I'd think. Unwarranted, ill-founded, poorly investigated and forced on us without any consultation.

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¤«Thʤ«PÔâ©H¤MëíTë®»¤

 

Click HERE for in-fighting, scrapping, name-calling, objectional and often explicit behaviour and cakes. Mind your tin-hat

 

Click HERE for Tench Fishing World forums

 

Playboy.jpg

 

LandaPikkoSig.jpg

 

"I envy not him that eats better meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do. I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do"

...Izaac Walton...

 

"It looked a really nice swim betwixt weedbed and bank"

...Vagabond...

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I dont actually seek the eel....dontcha just love em, but I cannot remember the last time that I even saw an eel in the any of my local rivers in the East Anglia.

"Muddlin' along"

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About as likely as a lift on the livebaiting ban I'd think. Unwarranted, ill-founded, poorly investigated and forced on us without any consultation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Responses to the public consultation on eels can be found at:

http://test.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/Consultation_feedback_summary_-_coarse_fish_removal.pdf

 

 

As far as the ban on the taking of eels by anglers being lifted

 

The EU's Data Framework Directive for fisheries requires member countries to make returns on the recreational catch for a number of species including eels and to a proven standard of accuracy.

 

For marine species the Marine Management Organisation has attempted to do this through data collected via the Sea Angling 2012 project.

 

But the Environment Agency (who are responsible for eels) has no mechasnism, nor the money or resources to produce figures for the recreational catch of eels that would satisfy the EU requirements.

 

Therefore, it's easier to simply ban the recreational take of eels!

 

The good news is that there is talk of removing the Data Framework Directive requirements, in which case the EA will be in a better position to remove the ban, once it is established that the recovery of eels is established (which I would think would need around 10 years of decent elver runs all around the country, and a greater understanding of the eel migration and barriers. (Such as may come out of the current ICES survey effort in the Sargasso region).

 

In the meantime the monitoring programme is being extended, especially through 'citizen science' projects, and a lot of eel-friendly fish passes are being built at obstructions, which will also benefit other migratory species, such as shads, salmonoids, lampreys etc.

Edited by Leon Roskilly

RNLI Shoreline Member

Member of the Angling Trust

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