The elver fishery is an area of fishery enforcement that not many anglers will ever see, as it happens on tidal waters at night during the months of February – May.
Elvers are juvenile eels and they are currently on the CITES appendix two list and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has them on their Red List as critically endangered species, the same level as the Panda.
As the Government body responsible for enforcing and regulating fisheries legislation, the Environment Agency regularly inspects the elver fishery on the River Severn. Fishermen are authorised by the Environment Agency at a cost of £85 per year. Around 300 individual fishermen catch elvers in the Severn and Wye catchments as they enter freshwater after their journey from the Sargasso Sea using special elver dip nets. Elver fishing can be very lucrative and the prices of the elvers, though governed by market forces, can fetch very high prices.
It should be remembered that this is not recreational fishing and the people that are involved in a commercial activity.
At present the price of a kilo of elvers in the UK legal market is £150 / kg – a kilo of elvers equates to approximately 3000 individual fish or about a pint glass full of fish. Elvers from the UK are not allowed to be exported outside of the EU and the vast demand for them in Asia has resulted in a black market for them.
On the black market the fish can fetch up to £4000 per kilo, and this leads to illegal exports and we have even stopped people trying to smuggle elvers in hand luggage at UK airports. Due to the amount of money involved, there is a high involvement with organised crime.
The fishermen on the bank have to comply with the legislation regulated by the Environment Agency. This legislation is in place to reduce fishing effort on the elver fishery, by limiting fishing practices and net types. Part of this legislation (The Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975) states that an authorisation is needed to lawfully operate an elver dip net. Any net that is operated without a valid authorisation gives its user an unfair financial benefit over lawful fishermen. Apart from unlawfully gaining financially from catching elvers, they are also reducing the number of elvers that are able to escape into our lakes and rivers and carry on their natural life cycle.
Netsmen don’t always catch kilos of elvers every night, most nights they might only get 200 – 400 grams but over the whole length of the catchment this can lead to vast quantities of elvers being weighed-in each night. However if a big “ball” of elvers comes through hundreds of kilos have been caught by individuals in one night.
As with rod licences an elver authorisation doesn’t give you a “right to fish” and the netsmen pay for their tumps (a specific area to fish, like an anglers peg or swim). Some of these “tumps” are more lucrative than others and the fishermen are very protective about their fishing locations.
The fishermen have to keep strict records of what is caught each night and when the fish are sold to legitimate sources the buyer has a responsibility to restock a certain percentage of the fish weighed in which, along with fishing restrictions and a short season, makes the fishery sustainable.
Officers are out on most nights during the elver season, their role includes overt patrols, checking compliance and fishing methods being used as well as recording catches and deterring sales to the black market.
13 comments
Comment by A.Madsen posted on
Elvering should be banned out right in the uk. As a RSA its evident that silver eel numbers in the severn estuary have completely collapsed, certainly to that of what they were as little as 5 years ago. RSA's are banned from retaining eels and catch far far less than the commercial netters ever will, yet commercial netters are given a license to wipe out the species. It is scandalous to say the least.
Comment by phill jones posted on
i totaly agree
and for £85 per licence its a joke...
still on the 6 /3 2020 the uk send out the message thats finished this species for good
man get 24 month jail sentance for selling 53 million pounds worth of elvers.....suspended for two years and 240 comunity servis....
the judge is in a different world
and ian truby of the nca has told people this is better than smuggelin drugs
Comment by MARK HUDSON posted on
Is there a contact phone number to report illegal fishing of elevers?
Comment by eileenroffe posted on
Morning - 0800 80 70 60 - it is our incident reporting team open 24/7/365 - Eileen
Comment by Lynne posted on
Every year elver poachers congregate on the river Parrett footpath. They boltcrop padlocks to drive their vehicles on the riverbank too. I have reported their activities as I could see they were illegal by the size of the nets they used but they were just left to it. I feel we are just waiting for this species to sadly become extinct 🙁
Comment by eileenroffe posted on
Hello - please report this to our national incident team on: 0800 80 70 60 - Eileen
Comment by Stefan posted on
Yes, get their number plates & everybody fishing for Elvers should have their finances investigated by HMRC and go back 20 years doing that - that should deter people from fiddling like that
Comment by Lynne posted on
Thank you. I have made a note of the number to call which will hopefully not be changed before next year when the illegal activities begin again.
Comment by John posted on
I have recently gone back to going sea fishing. If I catch one eel which I would eat myself,I have to put it back due to eel stocks. Yet these people legal and illegal are catching millions. The French eat them with special wooden forks, even as a starter ,there would more than a thousand. Clearly the system needs more controls from the government.
Comment by Stefan posted on
Only to repeat
Yes, get their number plates & everybody fishing for Elvers should have their finances investigated by HMRC and go back 20 years doing that - that should deter people from fiddling like that
Comment by Geoffrey Rees posted on
Put elvers on an endangered species list.
Comment by Fry's posted on
This seems a bit fishey to me
Comment by Rob Monje posted on
The ultimate goal should not just be saving the species but saving the species AND having a sustainable eel fishery at the end of it. There ought to be a 5 year moratorium on elver fishing to try and boost recruitment as i do not believe that the elver runs are anywhere near as abundant as even 20 years ago now. I monitor the eel population in my area closely and am noticing the disparity of size of specimens. The majority of the eel I record are more than 10 years old and there have been deceasing numbers of 'boot lace' specimens which could indicate that for the past ten years eels have not been succesfully establishing in freshwater.
The licensed fishers who benefit finacially from elver fishing should be paid off and hired to work as bailiffs patrolling their home stretches of rivers during the elver run. They would effectively become Police Constables under the Salmon and Freshwater fisheries act and would have powers of arrest. A total elver ban for 5 years would mean that bailifs could be certain that anybody seen targetting the species during this period was doing so illegally and act accordingly.
The fisherman stand to make the greatest gains from the recovery of the species so lets see them use their intimate knowledge of their waters for the greater good for a few years and see what a difference it makes.