The Journal. - Guns and Death Threats in Canada’s Baby-Eel Fisheries

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

The high price of baby eels has triggered an upsurge in illegal fishing and criminal activity in Canada. Earlier this year, the country announced a ban on baby-eel fishing in an attempt to contain the violence and to protect dwindling fish stocks. We speak to WSJ’s Paul Vieira and to a baby-eel fisherman about how a tiny fish has created a turf war in a remote Canadian community. Further Reading: -Guns and Death Threats Spur Canada to Reel in Baby-Eel Fishing  Further Listening: -Will Florida’s Plan to Get Cheap Drugs From Canada Work?  -Canada’s Historic Settlement with Indigenous People  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stanley King manages a fishing business in Nova Scotia, Canada. Stanley often sets out fishing nets late at night. Standing on the edge of the river, sometimes cold, sometimes rainy, but usually very calm. The other side of the river is all forest. There are no streetlights. There are no houses. We see the moon and the stars on good nights. And you're wearing waders?

Yeah, wearing waders, getting wet. The water's pretty cold, so you try not to stand in it too long or fall in. And, you know, some nights are pretty icy and below zero. Yeah, it's a wet, cold job. Would you describe it as pleasant? Do you enjoy it? Oh, some nights it's more than pleasant. Some nights it's almost magical, waiting for these little creatures to come upstream. waiting for these little creatures to come upstream. The creatures Stanley is waiting for are baby eels.

Once a year, these tiny fish ride ocean currents for thousands of miles, from the Sargasso Sea to the cold waters of Canada's rivers. Stanley's been fishing for baby eels as long as he can remember. And it used to be a pretty solitary occupation. But he says in recent years, that's started to change. Last year in 2023, there was at least 25 people fishing on each side of the river. So upwards of 50, 100 people each night illegally fishing on every single river we fish. And it's not just the rivers that we fish.

It was across the whole province. All of this for baby eels? That's one way to put it. All of this for money is the other way I'd put it. These baby eels can fetch over 2,000 Canadian dollars a pound. With prices like that, there's been a surge in poaching, crime, and even violence. And the Canadian government is struggling to keep it under control. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Friday, May 3rd.

Coming up on the show, how a tiny fish has created a turf war in a remote Canadian community. Attention all soccer fans. From Orlando to Los Angeles, take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway.

Head to visittheusa.com. A baby eel is called an elver, and it can fit in the palm of your hand. They're very beautiful, actually. They're only about 10 centimeters long, which for you Americans, think about maybe three inches. Okay. They are completely transparent. Some people call them glass eels. And they are just beautiful little creatures. How many pounds of elvers do you catch a year or sell a year? Sure. So we have a quota.

So we're only allowed to catch so much. So our total quota is about 1,000 kilos. So that's, I think, about 2,200 pounds. And who do you sell them to? Well, at the beginning of this industry 30 years ago, that was the real big question. We had nobody to sell them to. And the Canadian industry actually started off as an experimental fishery

because neither the government nor us knew if this was actually going to take off. But we traveled the globe and we drummed up business. Nobody wanted to buy these eels, but we forged relationships and said, listen, you should take a chance on us. And they eventually did. The market they found was on the other side of the world. All of our eels now go to China to be grown out in aquaculture facilities. And then after they're grown out, that takes about a year,

they are harvested, processed, usually roasted, and then distributed back across the world for sushi. In sushi, these eels are called unagi, and they've become more popular with foodies around the world, like with this YouTuber. And everyone is here to eat unagi, which is... It's often served with rice and a sweet, sticky sauce. Just so oily and rich and fatty and just melts in your mouth. And then you've got the sauce, which has a, I mean, it's smoky, and it has a bit of a sweet caramelized taste to it as well. Just grilled to perfection.

Traditionally, eels have been fished in Europe and Japan. But overfishing, pollution, and climate change has endangered some eel species. In 2010, the European Union banned the export of eels. This created an opportunity for rural fishing villages in Canada. On an annual basis, the baby eel fishery injects something like $45 million a year. I mean, that sounds like small potatoes, but for that part of the country, it's a sizable sum. That's our colleague Paul Vieira, who covers Canada.

It's also important for a number of indigenous communities along the Atlantic coast who are employed. I mean, the fishery employs around 1,100 people. You know, again, it's sort of a niche industry, but very valuable. How much, like how valuable are these baby eels? How valuable? Well, at least in Canada, at their peak, they were selling for about $5,000 a kilo, or you're talking about basically $2,000 a pound. So it's considered one of the most lucrative catches in Canada. That seems like a lot, is it? Yes, yeah. You're talking about a lot of money.

One night of fishing could make you 20,000 Canadian dollars. That's what drew people to illegally fish in the Nova Scotia rivers where Stanley works. When did you first start to notice that the peaceful eel fishing vibes were changing? I'd say probably around 2016, we would see every once in a while an unlicensed fisher fishing our rivers. Now, I say our rivers, but these are rivers that only our company is licensed to fish. So you notice when somebody shows up and starts fishing and you don't know who they are. You know, there was a couple more people in 2017, a couple more people in 2018. And in 2020, the start of the season started with an explosion of unlicensed fishers accessing the fishery.

And it's been an epidemic ever since, to the point where we were seeing people coming from all over Canada, but also from the U.S. to come and fish elvers in Nova Scotia. Stanley's company, which has about 20 employees, has a commercial license from the government to fish the elvers. This license limits which rivers they're allowed to fish on and how much they can catch. We have to be responsible stewards of the resource, so we don't want to overfish them. So that's why the government and the government biologists have come up with not only a license

system, but a quota system. Last year, there were a dozen commercial license holders in Atlantic Canada. They are the only businesses that can legally fish for elvers, though some indigenous communities say they have treaty rights to fish. Everyone else who turns up to fish for the baby eels is doing so illegally. And Stanley says that as more poachers have come, the mood on the river has changed. He says his fishing equipment has been damaged and stolen. And things have also gotten violent.

We sent two guys to fish on the Hubbards River, which is in Nova Scotia. And they watched a few different groups of illegal fishers join them on both sides of the river. Stanley's employees said a fight broke out between some people who were illegally fishing. Some of them set nets, some of them used dip nets, and two of the ones that were using dip nets came a little too close to somebody's fight net. And so he started yelling across the river, like, you know, get away from my net. He threatened them with a gun. And the next thing you know, you see a truck, you know, flying down the road. Two guys jump out with pipes, beat this guy to a bloody pulp, jump back in their car. The police came and chased this car

down the road. We read the next day in the paper that they were throwing guns out of the windows as they were driving down the road, which in Canada is really shocking because we don't see much gun violence at all. Anyway, it left our two fishers pretty shaken up. Guns out the window? Absolutely. Yeah, this has been pretty scary times. So with all this violence, the government then stepped in? You would think so.

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You can enjoy free beer, wine, and premium snacks in economy class. Now extended to flights within Canada and the U.S. Cheers to taking off this summer. More details at aircanada.com. A few years back, when Stanley and his employees started to see violence on the waterways, they got in touch with Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or the DFO. They have enforcement officers, so they have fisheries officers. We would call them, and they wouldn't respond.

In fact, whole seasons would go by, and we'd call them every day, and they wouldn't respond. In fact, whole seasons would go by and we'd call them every day and they would never come. Now, we decided that, well, the next best thing for us to do would be called the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And for the first year, they came and they were a big help. But the next year when we started to call them, they told us rather explicitly that, hey, DFO has told us not to respond to offer calls anymore. It's under their mandate. They don't want us there. And so we're not going to come anymore. So they wouldn't come and DFO still wouldn't come. The RCMP has said it falls to the DFO to enforce violations of the Fisheries Act.

The DFO says it has enforcement officers patrolling the Elver waterways. The government has tried to address the problem by shortening the fishing season. Last year, it shut it down after less than three weeks. On Saturday, DFO halted the fishing season, citing concerns about conservation and safety. The most valuable fishery by weight in Canada was closed on the weekend because of violence and widespread poaching. Commercial fishers are frustrated at the situation, estimating that overall, licensed fishers only caught about half their quota before the closure. that overall, licensed fishers only caught about half their quota before the closure.

But Stanley says this closure last year didn't solve the problem. In 2023, the poaching continued unabated. I mean, really, if anything, they just poached even more because the licensed fishermen were off the rivers. And it just didn't work the way they wanted it to. The closures didn't work. The poaching got worse. There were also some disturbing events. A federal lawmaker who represents fishing communities in parts of Nova Scotia said he found death threats in his mailbox, along with the severed heads of Canada geese. He said he believes they were from poaching groups. This year, the government took even more drastic action.

It shut down the elver season entirely. Yesterday, the department acknowledged it cannot manage the fishery. The federal government has carried through on its threat to cancel the upcoming Elver fishery. Here's Deputy DFO Minister Annette Gibbons speaking to lawmakers. It is not possible to have a safe and sustainable Elver fishery in 2024, and therefore the fishery should not be opened. The DFO said there had been harassment, threats, and violence in the fishery and toward fishery officers. This created a, quote, immediate threat to the management of the fishery and public safety. The DFO also pledged to arrest those caught illegally fishing this year. It says it's working to make regulatory changes before reopening elver fishing.

Here's Paul. Officials acknowledge that they need new tools or need new regulations. At one point, a top official at Canada's fishery department said they would need a couple of years to do this. You know, the fishermen say they do not have two years to wait. They need a livelihood. Their fishing season was already shortened in 2023. It's non-existent this year. They need it reopened.

I guess this is going to be a test of political will about what steps officials here are going to take to ensure it reopens and whether or not they're going to be able to successfully deter overfishing or illegal fishing. It's just a lot of distrust and tension among all the parties here about what exactly will happen. Since early March, the DFO said it has made 123 arrests related to illegal elver fishing, more than all of last year. For Stanley, this year's ban was a big blow. And what does that mean for your business? Well, it means we're out of business. There are no other fishing licenses that we hold.

Our employees got a very teary Zoom meeting where we had to tell everybody, sorry guys, I know the season is only about two weeks away, and you guys were all sort of gearing up for it. But there will be no season. And we had a lot of like, what am I going to do? I'm going to have to sell my car. I'm going to have to sell my house. You know, these people depend on these jobs and they're not replaceable at short notices, if at all.

Are you going to be able to fish elvers again? Oh, that's a really good question. And it sort of breaks my heart to think that maybe one day we won't be able to do this. And, you know, if the government doesn't get its act together, I can't guarantee that this industry will survive. And are the unlicensed fisher people still out there? Every night, they're out there.

So in the last, let's say, three weeks, I think I've made 18 reports of unlicensed fishing. We keep cameras up on our rivers that are motion activated. They send pictures to my cell phone. And so I know when people are out there. And they're still fishing. That's all for today, Friday, May 3rd. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Annie Baxter,

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