Public Story
Eel Trafficking
Glass eels are a big - and now highly regulated - business in Maine, one of only three states where they're legal to fish. The elver eels are called glass eels at this stage of their development because of their transparency (as they grow older they also turn opaque). The eels are caught and sent to Asia to be raised there, then processed and sent off to be consumed as unagi. In May of this year glass eels were going for between $1,200 and $1,350 a pound, and there's roughly 2,000 glass eels to a pound. At the start of the eel fishing season this year two men in Maine were indicted for illegally trafficking wildlife as part the U.S. Government's "Operation Broken Glass". Agents have nabbed more than a dozen men for illegally smuggling baby eels to Asia.
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