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Today, millions of baby eel are released in the lake” Grevelingenmeer “in an effort to restore the European eel population in the Netherlands. The Dutch fishing industry has been doing this since 2009, but critics say it's not enough.
Eel stocks in the Netherlands have fallen by 90 percent since the 1960s compared with today, the conservation group WWF writes. The number of European eels, known as “glass eels”, migrating from the sea to the Netherlands via Europe's inland waterways is also decreasing. As a result, the species is listed on the Red List of endangered Species. Because eels play an important role in the ecosystem, a shortage of eels is problematic, according to WWF.
According to a study last year by Ravon, the Dutch centre for Reptiles, amphibians and fish knowledge, 40% percent of Dutch waters are inaccessible to animals. At the time, the knowledge center said this was an important reason for the decline of the eel population.
For this reason, glass eels have been shipped from France to the Netherlands for release. But speaking on NOS radio, Martijn Schiphouwer, an eel researcher from Ravon, said that rather than helping the eel population recover, it may have had the opposite effect. "We don't know if shipping these eels to parts of Europe will have a positive impact. If we leave them alone, they might grow better and the eels can decide where they want to go." 'If you release eel larvae somewhere, the local eel population does benefit,' he says. "But you don't know if an eel will grow up to be an adult that can swim back out to sea, or if it has been fished before and survived."
The glass eel was carried back to Europe by the current
Normally, it takes five to 15 years for babay eel to reach sexual maturity from the sea into the inland waterways of the Netherlands. Adult eels find their way back to the sea and then cross to the Sargasso Sea near the Bahamas, some 5,000 kilometers away, where they mate. This happens once in their lifetime, and the adult eels die after mating. The glass eel was carried back to Europe by the current, and the cycle began again.
"In 2009 we hastily put together an eel management plan, with the idea that introducing glass eels might help," Schiphouwer said. It's been 13 years, and we still don't actually know if it helps. It was probably a good measure at the time, but we still don't see positive signs that the eel population is recovering."
Schiphouwer said he had not seen adult eels swim back to the sea to breed. "In theory, if they breed, you should see more glass eels returning to Europe, but we're not seeing that increase either."
A better solution, according to Schiphouwer, would be to make waterways in Europe and the Netherlands more fish-friendly. "We have lots of locks, pumping stations, DAMS and weirs that should be able to get more fish through so they can swim from A to B and back on their own. There are still a lot of bottlenecks in the waterways here."
