Worried about eels going extinct, Passamaquoddy call for end of fishery

By John Chilibeck | Local Journalism Initiative Reporter The Daily Gleaner

The Indigenous nation whose traditional area has been at the heart of the lucrative trade in baby eels is calling for a moratorium to allow the threatened species to recover.

Picture by Diego Catto on Unsplach

Paul Williams, the lead negotiator for the Peskotomuhkati or Passamaquoddy Nation in southwestern New Brunswick, says the season should be closed until scientists can prove the delicate creatures, often called elvers or glass eels when they are young, aren’t at risk of being wiped out.

“For the past three years, the Peskotomuhkati council has been saying, ‘suspend the harvest completely, nobody should be harvesting these critters.'” Williams told Brunswick News, referring to the three-member council led by Chief Hugh Akagi, himself a former scientist with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or DFO.

“They don’t want permits to fish elvers and they don’t want elver fishing in Charlotte County, their traditional territory.”

As prices for the translucent creatures have risen, people have fought over the spring run in dozens of rivers in the Maritimes. For the last several years, there have been clashes between opposing fishers at nighttime, when the harvest takes place.

The violence and unauthorized fishing got so bad that the federal fisheries minister suspended the season in the Maritimes this year.

The popularity in Asian cuisine of what is properly called American eels and the collapse of stocks in Europe have pushed prices up markedly.

Buyers who ship the eels to Asia, where they’re grown in tanks to adulthood and then made into sushi or other delectable dishes, have paid as much as $5,000 a kilogram for them, although prices have moderated this year to closer to $4,000 per kg. It is still the most lucrative seafood by weight in Canada.

The two parties with licences to fish elvers in southwestern New Brunswick are at odds.

Mary Ann Holland, whose family developed the local industry 35 years ago and until recent years controlled the fishery, has argued her business and the livelihoods of the dozens of people she hires are jeopardized by Ottawa’s proposal to give more of the total allowable catch to First Nations.

The Wolastoqey Nation already has a sliver of the quota, on the St. John River and its tributaries, but DFO has proposed giving them up to half the catch in the region, upsetting Holland.

She is suing the leaders of the Wolastoqey Nation and more than 100 Indigenous members whom she’s accused of stealing elvers from rivers and streams where she holds a permit in Charlotte County.

Both warring parties say elvers can continue to be sustainably harvested.

Ross Perley, the chief of Neqotkuk, or Tobique First Nation in northwestern New Brunswick, said he questioned the science the Peskotomuhkati was using.

“From what I’ve seen and our fishers have seen, there’s an abundance and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down,” the chief told Brunswick News. “And I assume if there was any concern about eels being endangered, DFO would put a stop to it.”

For her part, Holland said that in 1995 licence-holders in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia funded a study for DFO to measure the number of elvers each year in one representative freshwater body, the East River, in Chester, Nova Scotia.

She described it as the longest-running recruitment study of the American eel in North America and the basis for determining the annual quota.

It shows an increase in elvers over the last several years, although scientists say uncertainty remains over the stock’s health.

“Conservation has always been a key component of the commercial elver fishery,” Holland wrote in an email to Brunswick News. “What we do not know is the cumulative effect of the rampant unimpeded elver poaching in recent years because it takes 12 to 20 years or more for eels to reach maturity and reproduce.”

In the latest DFO peer-reviewed research report, from October 2023, it states that a couple of years’ worth of data are missing from the East Chester River between 2018 and 2022 because the fishery was closed.

On top of that, scientists are unsure how many baby eels were snatched up by people without a licence.

“There is known to be a high level of unauthorized harvesting directed towards elvers,” the report states. “This represents a significant source of uncertainty for elver abundance.”

The adult eel population in the rivers appears to be stable, based on a time series produced from commercial catches.

However, the figures are nowhere near as high as in the mid-1990s, when the local rivers were flush with American eels. The report noted that far fewer people are fishing adult eels these days, putting less pressure on the species.

In 2012, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada assessed American eel as threatened. DFO says American eel is also under consideration for listing under the Species at Risk Act.

Lauren Sankey, a DFO spokeswoman, told Brunswick News that her department was working with the Wolastoqey Nation on monitoring the abundance and biological characteristics of elver in the Wolastoq, or St. John River, and other rivers.

But Williams says all the uncertainty is reason to pause the fishery. When scientists can show that the eels are thriving again, the Peskotomuhkati want first dibs.

“The present policy remains putting conservation and restoration first, food for the people second, a sustainable Peskotomuhkati commercial fishery third, consistent with Canadian law’s priority of allocation, and other fisheries fourth,” the lawyer and negotiator said.

Williams added that the Peskotomuhkati Nation did not want to comment on other Indigenous groups – such as the Wolastoqey Nation or Amlamgog (Fort Folly First Nation) – that want a piece of the action.

Similarly, he said his comments only related to his nation within southwestern New Brunswick, the community at Skutik, which includes St. Andrews and St. Stephen.

The Peskotomuhkati is divided between Canada and the United States, with two communities across the border in Maine.

“The Peskotomuhkati would not seek to dictate what other nations do in their traditional territories,” he said. “I’m speaking for the community at Skutik. The communities of Sipayik and Mothakamikuk have been dealing with the State of Maine about the elver fishery on their side of the border, and their approach to the fishery is equally complex and I haven’t been involved in their discussions.”

In a media release issued earlier this month, the Wolastoqey Nation sharply criticized Holland for her comments that Ottawa’s proposal to give more of the catch to Indigenous groups was unfair to her entrepreneurial family that found markets overseas.

Wolastoqey leaders believe their people have the treaty right to fish and that they have priority over the non-Indigenous industry. They also take issue with Holland over the idea that they’ve been poaching on what they consider their traditional rivers.

“The Supreme Court backs us up,” Perley said, referring to cases as far back as the Marshall decisions more than 20 years ago. “Conservation is the priority, then rights’holders, then others.”

The chief, who’s been trying to convince the feds to open the elver fishery for his people for a decade, had little sympathy for Holland’s plight. He said she’d built a good business based on privilege.

“There’s room for compromise but with pending litigation, that can’t happen,” Perley said, referring to the Rothesay businesswoman’s lawsuit.

“Fishing eels is part of our tradition and elvers are a lucrative resource that we were left out of from the start, which we shouldn’t have been.”

For her part, Holland said she stood by her previous statement that her industry is at risk of being gutted and that her family has invested decades of sweat and toil running the business.

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