As baby eel fishermen in Maine prepare for the start of the 2020 fishing season later this month, harvesters and dealers are concerned the global coronavirus outbreak could reduce demand, and therefore prices, for their catch.
The vast majority of baby eels, also known as glass eels or elvers, that are caught in Maine are shipped live to eastern Asia, with most going to China, where they are grown to market size in aquaculture ponds, and then to Japan for that country’s robust consumer seafood market.
But measures China and neighboring countries have taken to control the spread of the infection are constraining the Asian seafood trade, on which Maine’s elver fishery almost exclusively depends.
Restrictions on live seafood shipments in and out of China and quarantines that constrain transportation and commerce within the country could result in fewer available buyers for eels, a species that has generated more than $168 million for Maine fishermen over the past nine years. The disease also has spread to South Korea and Japan, where similar quarantines and transportation restrictions would sharply reduce the consumption of eel and other imported foods.
We have gotten word that the price is not looking good, the Maine Elver Fishermen’s Association wrote last month on its Facebook page, citing the impact of the disease in China, where at one point officials thought the outbreak had started at a seafood market in the city of Wuhan. As far as we know the price is going to be 25 percent lower than last year.