This ancient fish is prized by Prosper\u2019s band, the Paqtnkek Mi\u2019kmaw Nation, which has eaten and used it for materials, medicine, and spiritual offerings for millennia. Less glamorous than lobster or salmon\u2014and for decades, worth far less commercially\u2014the eel has long slipped beneath the radars of many large-scale commercial fishermen in Atlantic Canada. But with skyrocketing global demand for eels, that\u2019s quickly changing.<\/p>\n
![\"Kerry](\"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/fishing-distance-american-eels.jpg\")
<\/a>Kerry Prosper of the Paqtnkek Mi\u2019kmaw Nation fishes for eels in Pomquet Harbour in northeastern Nova Scotia.<\/p><\/div>\n
First Nations leaders, including Prosper, along with some non-native fishermen, say regional eel populations are dropping and allege indecision by Canada\u2019s federal government is putting the fish in jeopardy. But others, including entrepreneurs hungry to feed growing international demand, insist maintaining a well-managed eel fishery is the only way to ensure the species\u2019 survival, as harvesters work to keep a lucrative stock sustainable.<\/p>\n
The American eel\u2019s future now depends on a long-awaited government ruling on whether or not to officially list it as a species at risk. A ruling to list could devastate Canada\u2019s estimated $20-million commercial eel fishery, disrupt plans to expand the fishery into land-based aquaculture worth many times more, and contradict two recent rulings south of the border. This is the moment many government scientists live for: the chance to use decades of specialized knowledge to interpret data and shape government policy. But even they\u2019re struggling to understand this elusive fish, which one Canadian expert calls a \u201criddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.\u201d<\/p>\n
All this has transformed the American eel into an unexpected emblem of profound challenges facing modern fisheries management. From striking a balance between Indigenous rights and commercial demands in determining policy, to the economic illogic of shipping valuable fish overseas for processing and profit by other countries, to the challenge of crafting intelligent fisheries strategy on a backdrop of incomplete scientific data, this fish is at the crux of some of the most important conversations in Canadian fisheries today.<\/p>\n
A Right to Eel<\/h2>\n
When I first meet Kerry Prosper, the morning before our nighttime eel hunt, he\u2019s dwarfed by towers of paperwork packed into, onto, and around every surface of his desk at the Paqtnkek Mi\u2019kmaw Nation band office. It\u2019s the tableau of a modern bureaucrat, and a tangible reminder of Prosper\u2019s efforts to draw attention to the needs of his community and the colonial injustices inflicted upon it. He\u2019s wearing jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt with the Paqtnkek logo, and has a bundle of keys at his waist. His thick, dark hair, graying at the temples, is pulled back into a long, low ponytail.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Prosper, smiling in the light of his kerosene lantern after eel fishing, is often cited as a leading traditional knowledge holder on American eels.<\/p><\/div>\n
Prosper grew up fishing eels with his older brother in Paqtnkek [BUTTON-kek], a community of around 560 people about 20 minutes east of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The name means \u201cby the bay\u201d in Mi\u2019kmaw. Prosper, a former band chief, is often cited as Atlantic Canada\u2019s leading expert on the Mi\u2019kmaq and knowledge holder on the American eel, and he\u2019s certain eels aren\u2019t being well-managed\u2014proof for him that Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is putting commercial profits for non-Indigenous fishermen ahead of his nation\u2019s treaty rights. While not suggesting the commercial eel fishery be shut down entirely, Prosper argues that any decision about the future of American eel should include Indigenous rights at its core, not as an afterthought.<\/p>\n
Eel, or kat<\/em>, was a fundamental resource for Prosper\u2019s ancestors. Historically, First Nations have fished eel across Atlantic Canada and all the way up the St. Lawrence River to Lake Ontario. They corralled eels in stone weirs\u2014some dating back 4,000 years\u2014and speared them in shallow water, through ice holes in winter and from boats in summer. The Mi\u2019kmaq ate the fish stewed, baked, smoked, or dried. Healers used eel to soothe the sick, applying oil to help with earaches, while craftspeople used eel skins to bind everything from sleds, moccasins, and clothing to spears and harpoons.<\/p>\n While eel is no longer a mainstream protein in North America, it was once prized by colonial settlers, particularly Acadians and Quebecois. They copied Indigenous techniques, pushing their skiffs into the night and shining a torch in the water to spear or net eels in enormous quantities, often preferring the delicate, sweet meat pickled. As the communities coexisted, settlers intensified the fishery as cultural Mi\u2019kmaw eeling declined. In a study Prosper co-published in the early 2000s in collaboration with a local university, he discovered that young adults are far more likely to eat eel at their parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 homes than their own. So he started leading spear-making workshops, teaching Paqtnkek youth where to find eels, and how to catch and cook them in an effort to preserve that knowledge.<\/p>\n Prosper sharpens the prongs of his spear during a break from his eel hunt.<\/p><\/div>\n When Prosper launches his eel-fishing boat, it\u2019s from the sandy, marshy beach of Pomquet Harbour, minutes down the road from the Paqtnkek band office. It was here, 24 years ago, where the arrest and eventual exoneration of Donald Marshall Jr. codified the Mi\u2019kmaw, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy nations\u2019 rights to fish commercially in Atlantic Canada and Quebec.<\/p>\n What few Canadians know, says Prosper, is that Marshall was fishing for eel.<\/p>\n In August 1993, Marshall, a member of nearby Cape Breton\u2019s Membertou First Nation, caught and sold 210 kilograms of eel to a local buyer for $787.10. He was charged by DFO with fishing without a license, selling eels without a license, and fishing during a closed season, and his equipment was seized. Membertou, like Paqtnkek, is part of the Mi\u2019kmaw nation, the Maritimes\u2019 largest regional tribal group, and that nation rallied to his defense.<\/p>\n It was a double injustice. Marshall had already served nearly 11 years in prison for a murder he didn\u2019t commit (he was later exonerated), and upon his release turned to eeling to make a living. His legal team\u2014including Prosper\u2019s younger brother P. J., who was a law student when the case began\u2014maintained that Peace and Friendship Treaties signed in 1760 and 1761 gave their communities treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather. It took six years for the Supreme Court of Canada to rule, and when it did, it ruled in Marshall\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Marshall [decision] created a real uproar in the commercial fishery,\u201d says Prosper, who, shortly after the ruling, traveled throughout the region to explain it to non-Indigenous fishermen. \u201cThis really showed me what people thought about our treaty rights, and how they change when you seem to be impacting their money.\u201d He faced down crowds of angry, worried fishermen.<\/p>\n Prosper navigates Pomquet Harbour with light from a lantern.<\/p><\/div>\n By the mid-1990s, fishermen in the region were reporting shrinking catches, but it was nothing compared to what was happening to other eel species overseas. The Japanese eel population, which had started sliding in the 1970s, had collapsed. European eels were in free fall by the early 2000s. Environmental groups warn the same thing could happen in Canada if the government doesn\u2019t list the American eel as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA), a call that must be made by Canada\u2019s entire federal cabinet. A SARA listing would automatically prohibit killing, harming, harassing, possessing, collecting, buying, selling, or trading American eel in Canada. Within a year of listing, DFO would develop a recovery strategy, which could include permits or exemptions for commercial and recreational fishing, Indigenous or otherwise, and other activities affecting the fish. Or\u2014to the dread of commercial fishermen\u2014no exceptions at all.<\/p>\n Mitchell Feigenbaum sits at an old dinette table, a battered remnant of a country market and restaurant he recently bought on the outskirts of Port Elgin, New Brunswick, and sees the future. In it, his company South Shore Trading, North America\u2019s largest eel buyer and exporter, no longer has to exclusively sell baby eels to China. Feigenbaum, a former lawyer with a shock of coarse white hair, is wearing jean shorts and a red-checkered button-up. He moved here from Philadelphia about 18 years ago, but hasn\u2019t lost his Philly patois or ability to spot a business opportunity. He recently bought this building, where he eventually hopes to welcome tour buses packed with Japanese tourists detoured from visiting the Anne of Green Gables house, and hopefully sell them\u2014and any other interested customers\u2014some eel.<\/p>\n Eels won\u2019t naturally breed in captivity. So, while Canada\u2019s historic eel fishery is based on the netting and spearing of adult eels, the biggest money to be made these days is in using fine mesh nets to catch baby eels, called elvers, just off the coast, and then selling them, live, to Asian aquaculture farms. They\u2019re then raised to maturity and processed, often into Japanese-style unagi kabayaki<\/em>, a grilled eel fillet served with rice or in sushi.<\/p>\n Worker Doug Alder throws an eel back into a reservoir as he weighs a package of live eels for a shipment bound for Brussels at South Shore Trading in Port Elgin, New Brunswick.<\/p><\/div>\n Back in 2000, a Philadelphia eel company owned by Feigenbaum and a friend acquired another eel company, this one based in New Brunswick. It came with an experimental elver license. Within a decade, that license went from almost worthless to a major paycheck: in 2010, responding to its own collapsing eel stocks, the European Union banned all exports and imports of elvers, and worldwide prices for elvers of any species soon skyrocketed.<\/p>\n Since then, American eel elvers, each about the length of a golf tee, have commanded between $1,100 and $5,500 per kilogram on the international market, reaching a peak in 2012 and 2013, says Feigenbaum\u2014compared with $3.50 to $15 per kilogram for frozen, wild adult eels, which aren\u2019t suited for industrial processing. That meant the region\u2019s nine elver licenses\u2014which includes one communal commercial license held by an Indigenous group\u2014became the basis for a $20- to $30-million fishery practically overnight. Atlantic Canada\u2019s adult eel fishery, by contrast, includes around 400 license holders, 14 of them Indigenous, and is worth only a fraction of that.<\/p>\n Alder guides live eels into a weighing bucket at South Shore Trading.<\/p><\/div>\n Given the money at stake, Feigenbaum\u2019s ambitions exceed the complex of cavernous buildings in rural New Brunswick where South Shore Trading holds hundreds, sometimes thousands, of squirming American eels\u2014both elvers and adults, depending on the season\u2014in huge, noisy aerated tanks. He and a group of four other elver license-holding businesses and individual fishermen, along with three other investors, are putting their money behind NovaEel, a new eel aquaculture business with its eyes on the real prize: unagi<\/em>.<\/p>\n The NovaEel team wants to disrupt China\u2019s domination of the market by raising elvers, caught in the wild by its own shareholders, to full size in tanks within its own facilities as early as 2020. By processing eels into a packaged barbecued product, which they\u2019d sell at 10 times the price of elvers, they\u2019d pocket that extra cash, and keep it here in Atlantic Canada. Feigenbaum estimates NovaEel could create a $200- to $300-million per year market\u201410 times what Canada\u2019s current elver eel industry is worth. \u201cRight now we\u2019re hunters and gatherers,\u201d he says. \u201cWe go into the river, and we collect seeds. We sell them for $10, and the Chinese turn them into $100.\u201d The influx of money could provide an important boost to rural communities like Port Elgin, where unemployment is around 10 percent. For the plan to succeed, NovaEel needs a steady supply of elvers\u2014which hinges on the hotly anticipated federal SARA ruling.<\/p>\n The elver fishery has faced opposition since it started, especially from Indigenous groups and commercial fishermen reliant on adult eels. It\u2019s illogical, some critics say, to pluck sexually mature adults and<\/em> juveniles from an ecosystem and expect that the stock won\u2019t collapse. Maria Recchia of the Fundy North Fishermen\u2019s Association says their commercial adult eel fishermen worry maintaining an elver fishery risks the species\u2019 health and that of fish reliant on elvers as a food source. \u201cThey\u2019re certainly hoping eels will not be listed as a species at risk, but at the same time they\u2019re deeply concerned about the state of eels.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>Moving Up the Food Chain<\/h2>\n
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