Jordan Zimmerman Delaware Division of Fish & Wildlife Overview  Demand for glass eels

 Life History

 Stock status

 DE commercial fishery

 DDFW YOY survey at Millsboro Pond outlet

Why the fuss? The answer is quite simple -$$$$

 3 species – A. japonica, A. anguilla, A. rostrata  China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan have all developed sophisticated aquaculture operations that import glass eels  Between 2011 and 2013, EU reduced exports of elvers  demand in Asia soared  Demand carried over to US  price for glass eels from Maine went as high as $2,600/LB! Life History

 Eel life history often described with three $5 words  Catadromous  Spawn in ocean, live most of life in estuarine or fresh water

 Panmictic  Single breeding population with random breeding  Problems in one area can impact population  Resilient to negative impacts in one area

 Semelparous  Spawn once then die  Every eel harvested before they spawn

Life History cont’d  Range= Mississippi drainage east to Atlantic; Carribean - Canada  Maturity schedules dependent upon latitude and river mile  Some DE eels may mature as early as 4 yo  Fecundity  0.5 – 4 million eggs  8.5 million or more for very large individuals

Stages of Development

 Silver  Egress

 Yellow  Resident

 Elver  Pigmented YOY

 Glass  Ingress

 Leptochephalus  larval Life Cycle An Alternate Life Cycle Stock Status

 ASMFC  2012 Benchmark stock assessment  “Data poor” analysis  Defined status as “depleted”

 USFWS  Petitioned to list American eel as endangered/threatened in 2004  Rejected after review (2007)  Petitioned again recently and currently reviewing to ascertain if ESA listing is warranted

Causes of “depleted” status

 Loss/alteration of habitat  Turbine mortality  Toxins and contaminants  Parasites and disease  A. crassus  Up to 40% infection in DE in some years  Historic overfishing The Delaware Eel Fishery  Primarily yellow stage eels

 Food and bait (live market)  9” min  2 – 8 yo  caught in baited traps  HSC preferred bait  Very old fishery: William Penn in 1683 listed “Ele” among the plentiful fish in his colony that were able to support a fishery

DE Commercial Landings

 Most important fishery that no one knows about  Landings ~100k pounds/year since 2000  3rd largest harvest of all Atlantic Coast states  Occurs primarily in DE Bay tidal creeks; IB harvest averages 20% of state landings annually with as much as 42% in one year (2008)  Average value ($389,912/yr) since 2000 ranks 5th among all DE fisheries for the same time period

Management  Concern realized in mid-90s  1999 FMP  Mandatory commercial reporting  YOY survey  Subsequent addenda  Trip level catch & effort reporting  Min. size & mesh  Rec bag limit reduction Glass Eel  Mid-90s – boom in glass eel market  Asian aquaculture; ease of transfer  Low abundance of Japanese eel; European eel

 Effort/demand goes to US  ME and SC only states with legal harvest  “Gold rush” mentality  Poaching and unreported landings

DDFW survey • Feb 1st start or water temp above 3 ⁰C • Fyke net fished M-F; hauled out on weekends • All eels are counted (volumetrically) • Subsample = 60 (twice/wk) • L, W, and P stage are measured

Sampling Site

Glass eel site 2014 Results  26 samples  Feb 4 – April 4

 292,766 glass eels counted

 2 peaks of ingress

 No correlation to temp or flow in 2014

Pigmentation

 Pigmentation generally increased throughout monitoring period indicating that most recruitment to IR occurred early in sampling

Relative to other MA States Summary  American eel population is facing challenges in many parts of its range

 Recruitment (glass eel) has been above average for past 3 years with the 2 highest annual catches encountered in the 15 year time series.

 Results indicate that DE has one of the most important juvenile nurseries for American eels along the Atlantic coast of the US