DESCRIBED as “liquid gold”, baby eels or elvers are among the most valuable aquatic creatures in the world, with their price ranging from US$2,000 to US$15,000 per pound.

“It’s just like gold — it’s treated like commodities. So the day you catch it, it might be [worth] US$5,000 a pound, and then by the time you start having a lot of them at the end of the week, it might go up to US$11,000 a pound,” a local, who is a former fisher of the eels, told the Jamaica Observer.

The former fisher, whose identity is being withheld, previously held a licence to catch glass eels while working alongside a company that held an exploratory licence to export them.

The American eel (Anguilla rostrata) — which is native to the eastern United States and the Caribbean — is present in Jamaican waters, though the extent of its distribution across the island’s river systems remains unclear. It is considered catadromous, which means it reproduces in saltwater systems and matures in freshwater systems.

After hatching in the Atlantic Ocean’s Sargasso Sea, juvenile eels are carried by ocean currents along the eastern American coast, eventually being washed into freshwater rivers by tidal fluctuations. Once fully mature, eels return to the Sargasso Sea where it is believed that they spawn and die.

Humans have so far been unable to successfully breed the eels in captivity, keeping their supply scarce and their value high, thus sustaining a lucrative global market.

“They have to go around and get the young ones so that’s why it’s lucrative, because if people can find them, they can sell them to the Asian market and get any amount of price they can get, depending on the year — if it’s a good or a bad year,” the former fisher shared.

Noting the lack of a culture of eating eels in Jamaica, he explained that the eels are primarily sold to Asian markets where the demand is high.

“Everything is for the Asian market. Nobody consumes them here…It’s very popular in Asia, especially Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan…” he explained.

The tiny, translucent fish, nicknamed glass eels, are shipped live in clear plastic bags filled with water and pure oxygen. Once in Asia, they are raised in carefully tended tanks and ponds at aquaculture farms until they grow large enough to be consumed.

“Have you heard of the grilled eel? It’s a very famous Japanese dish…the Koreans eat it, too. So it’s eaten all over Japan and Asian countries — the adult eel — what they call the silver eel. It’s like a special dish. It’s not like something you can have every day, it’s considered like a high-end consumption,” the former eel harvester told the Sunday Observer.

“Sometimes it’s smoked. You can also consume the small eel. They usually fry them in Italian cuisine; they look like little fries when they finish them. Mostly, as I know, it’s either fried or grilled. A number of cultures eat it — Italians, Asians,” he added.

Describing the taste of eel, the former fisher said: “I love eel, that’s why I got into it, because I love eating it. It has a unique taste. It’s one of the best-tasting fish, very unique. But…the beauty about eel is that it’s very good for you. It has a lot of nutrients and vitamins…gives a lot of benefits.”

For the Japanese, eel is believed to have medicinal properties — helping to lower blood pressure, cleanse the blood, and boost stamina and strength.

The American eel has become an increasingly valuable commodity due to the decline of similar species such as the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) and the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), which have been heavily impacted by overfishing, poaching, and other forms of human interference.

However, the increased demand for the American eel has since placed additional pressure on its population, contributing to record-low numbers and resulting in the species being classified as endangered under criteria A2bd on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

Globally, several countries have taken action to restrict eel fishing.

In 2023, Canada shut down its highly lucrative baby eel fishery following a series of violent attacks on harvesters and growing concerns about widespread poaching of the threatened species. The American eel was subsequently listed as an endangered species under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, with Newfoundland and Labrador listing them as “vulnerable” under their Endangered Species Act.

These protective measures, combined with a soaring demand for glass eels in Asia, have fuelled a thriving black market for the highly sought-after commodity.

“People can smuggle them, too,” the former fisher told the Sunday Observer. “You can catch them, and instead of going through Customs, you can find another way of getting them out. They’re tiny…and they’re see-through.”

In 2024, two people from the Dominican Republic were charged with smuggling 22 bags of live, juvenile, American eels from Puerto Rico. The charges included knowingly exporting and attempting to export the protected species without declaring the cargo to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as failing to comply with the US Coast Guard.

The illicit eel trade is reportedly active in some Caribbean nations, including Haiti, Dominica, and Jamaica.

The Sunday Observer’s source revealed that at least one individual, locally, is suspected to be involved in the trade.

In Haiti, it is suspected that criminals use the eel industry as a way to launder illicit profits from the drug trade. According to media reports, before his assassination, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse had reportedly ordered a crackdown on the industry, allegedly compiling a list of powerful individuals tied to such activities. It is believed that he intended to hand over the list to US authorities before he was killed, media reports said.

“Do you remember the killing of the Haitian President Moïse? Well, he was creating a list of certain people — the oligarchy, the elite business people, and a couple of the people on it were people in the glass eel business. So, it’s lucrative. And, of course, other people in the world are in the contract business,” the source explained.

However, while concerns for the populations continue to grow worldwide and restrictions increase in other countries, American eels are not listed among Jamaica’s endangered species, which are protected by the Wild Life Protection Act. This means they can still be legally fished with a licence from the National Fisheries Authority (NFA).

According to a 2021 National Status Report on Fishing for American eel, exploratory fishing licences were granted to four companies between 2014 and 2021, each valid for 12 months. These licences were distributed to assess the feasibility of a glass eel market in Jamaica, with up to 32 individuals being licensed by the NFA to harvest glass eels.

However, the study found that the yields were inconsistent and generally low, raising concerns about the fishery’s long-term viability. One of the major issues identified was the lack of data on population dynamics, abundance, and distribution of eels in Jamaican waters.

The report concluded that if the fishery were to be developed, it would need to be carefully managed, with strict harvest controls and restricted access.

But the former fisher attributed the low yields to a lack of support from the Government and the NFA.

“We could catch as much as 20 pounds, 50 pounds, or 100 pounds of them. We were catching small amounts. It wasn’t working in the West Indies. The Caribbean rivers are different from the bigger rivers in North America. So nobody would come here, fly all the way from Asia, just to get five pounds from you. If you don’t have like 25 pounds, 40 pounds, then they’re not going to come and buy them. That was the problem,” he shared.

He continued, “It’s just that we need to have education and some more assistance from the fisheries or the Government, because other countries have this, so they know how to deal with this.”

Glass eels are harvested by fishermen using nets in rivers and streams, but catching them is far from easy. They can only be caught at night and in poor weather conditions.

“You can’t catch them on a sunny day. You have to wait for bad weather, like rain. So it’s not as easy as you think,” he explained.

Once caught, their care becomes the next challenge, as the species is highly delicate and demands careful attention. The former fisher explained that the eels must be kept in tanks with pumps that continuously supply air and filtered water.

“If anything goes off, like current [electricity] goes off, they die in 15 minutes. So you have to have it always regulated with air and oxygen. You have to store them properly until the buyer comes, and that takes a lot of understanding, because if the water temperature is too hot [or] too low, you could kill them.

“You have to separate them. You can’t have an overpopulation of them in each tank. You have to know that only 20 can fit [or] only 30 can fit in [a particular] tank. You can’t put like 200 pounds of them in one tank,” he said.

Feeding the eels is another hurdle.

“So if you’re holding them for somebody, like [for] two [or] three weeks, you have to feed them until that person comes, and it’s not easy to feed them. They have to learn how to feed from you. You feed them on a fish base. You have to train them to feed,” said the former eel harvester.

The former fisher explained that many fishermen lose their stock simply because they do not know how to care for the delicate creatures.

“You have to know what you’re doing because they’re so tiny, so the smallest mistake, they’ll die. And the next morning, [if] it’s gone and they’re dead, you can lose about US$85,000 worth of eel if you have like 40 pounds,” he said, adding, “It’s not that easy to keep them. Once you have them, you have sleepless nights watching them.”

Having previously held a licence to catch glass eels, the former fisher expressed frustration over his inability to secure his own export licence.

“I came out of it because the government won’t give me a licence, and I can’t catch eels and just have them in my possession and I can’t get rid of them. I hear that they’re not issuing any more licences again. The last person with a licence, he died. I don’t hear anybody who’s able to access any more licences,” he told the Sunday Observer.

He criticised the restrictions on eel fishing in Jamaica, describing the licensing process as unnecessarily limiting.

“The problem with Jamaica is that they’re limiting it because they claim that these eels are overfished, but nobody’s fishing them. They’re not being fished. Nobody’s eating them. Jamaicans don’t eat eels. When I go and catch eels, big ones, people run, they say it look like a snake. Nobody’s consuming them. It’s not as if people are running them down locally,” he said.

“It’s not a cultural thing here, where people consume eels in any kind of cuisine or dish,” he added.

The Sunday Observer reached out to the NFA for comment, but after repeated follow-ups, no response was forthcoming.

The former eel harvester is, however, urging NFA to make the licensing process easier and more accessible.

“We’re not capitalising on it. If we had the right people and the training…You just can’t go on YouTube and monitor, somebody has to… train you. The people who were doing it were Jamaicans, they weren’t people from Japan or Taiwan or China, who this is their culture, thousands of years they’ve been raising eels. They know all about the animal. We just did this recently,” he said.