“Let’s stop eating eels if we don’t want them to disappear”
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It is an appeal that has still remained unheard if it periodically makes itself heard again. In fact, they have been coming from many places for years warning signs for eels: they are less and less and risk disappearing. The causes are many: pollution and physical barriers that prevent them from moving freely to complete their complex and fascinating life cycle do their part. THE pesticides, the currents also changing, recall from the European Commission. But to threaten the health ofEuropean eel (Eel eel) is of course also fishing, commercial and recreational, and we can no longer ignore it. But the fishing control measures are also added to those aimed at consumers: please don’t eat them anymore.
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It was one of the last to launch this appeal Miguel Clavero Pineda, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station of the Spanish National Research Council for natural sciences. It does this from the pages of The Conversation, where bluntly he writes: “We are eating the European eel until it becomes extinct”. His intervention does not refer so much to the reasons that led the eels to the situation of today-when there are less than a tenth of them compared to fifty years ago – but rather to the widespread habit of eating eels, in defiance of the signs of threat that loom over the species. The European eel indeed is considered a highly endangered species, equivalent to “critical” status according to the IUNC red list. Yet the traditions and food and wine events born and raised to celebrate the eel seem to forget it. Obviously, we Italians are also included, where the eel remains the main dish of the Neapolitan tradition for Christmas or the protagonist of festivals such as that of Comacchio.
Yet even these traditions need to be reviewed given the state of eels today. Perhaps those who look for them or eat them are not aware of the risk these animals are in, writes Pineda. And the measures already taken – since 2007 Europe has adopted legislation on the subject to promote the sustainable fishingthe reconstitution of habitats and the movement of animals, and since 2018 has launched a three-month break every year to fishing – they cannot be enough. Not even the stop can be enough stretchedsix months, announced in recent days, reiterated by MedReAct, the organization in defense of Mediterranean biodiversity.
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In fact, activists and experts are calling for zero catches, both for commercial and recreational purposes, for the whole of 2023, with a ban that also affects glass eels for restocking purposes and for aquaculture, the stage in which the eels return to fresh water after their trip to the ocean, from Sargasso Seawhere they go to reproduce. How long? Even for ten years, writes Pineda. On the other hand, we don’t necessarily have to eat eels. “The eel recipes they are still heavily publicized in the media and served in elegant restaurants – he concludes – I want to believe that chefs and food journalists simply are not aware of the critical state of eel, and that they would support a ban on eel exploitation if they only knew” .
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