Affected by the epidemic, this year's Lunar New Year seems a bit deserted, but this has not affected the enthusiasm of fishermen at the mouth of the Yangtze River. In the darkness of the night, fishermen patiently waited at the mouth of the river. What they were waiting for was a distant guest who was about to follow the tide, the eel seedlings.
Eel fry weighing only 0.1-0.2 g as thin as silk Source: flickr
Spring is just beginning to rise. Flocks of transparent, fickle eel larvae migrate westward from the Chinese mainland, 2,600 kilometers east of the waters near the Mariana Trench, known for being the deepest part of the known ocean, to the west on a tidal wave to find where their parents once lived. When they reach the estuary, fishermen who have been waiting for a long time catch them ashore using nets such as fixed nets or copy nets with fine holes such as mosquito nets, and then send them to nurseries to become the seeds of captive-reared eels. By the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, they will appear on thousands of tables and become the main ingredient in the rice of the internet red eel.
This is the story of the farming of eels.
Eel rice Source: flickr
Succulent eels are a must for Japanese people in summer and have been sought after by many Chinese foodies in recent years. Eels are delicious, but the current situation of eels is critical. Back in 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the Japanese eel, the world's most consumed eel, as an endangered species. This seems to be very different from our impression of it as "everywhere.".
What happened to the eels? Will we be able to happily eat eel rice in the future? This article will tell you the answer.
The legend of life in the rivers and lakes and oceans
Japanese eels (Anguilla japonica) are eels, eels, eels, commonly known as Japanese eels and river eels, and are the world's largest consumption of eels. Adult Japanese eels are 40–90 cm long, with a maximum recorded size of 150 cm and a weight of no more than 1.9 kg.
Most of the time, Japanese eels inhabit freshwater environments such as rivers, lakes, ponds, and even rice paddies. They hide in underwater rock crevices or earthen holes during the day and come out at night to hunt for small fish, shrimp, crabs, earthworms, and aquatic insects. They are not picky eaters, and they will eat large chunks when they encounter some large animal carcasses.
Japanese Eel (Anguilla japonica) Hand-drawn: Li Yuqiang QMCS
For a long time, Japanese eels were considered freshwater fish. It was not until the last century that their mysterious life history was fully explored by mankind. It turns out that the life of the Japanese eel goes through several stages of development.
Life History of Japanese Eel Hand-Drawn: Li Yuqiang QMCS
Mature Japanese eels migrate from freshwater environments to spawn near the seamounts of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific thousands of kilometers away, and then die in their birthplace; newborn young eels travel north on currents, grow in rivers and lakes in China, Japan, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula and other East Asian regions for 5 to 15 years, and then return to their birthplace to complete the mission of succession and die. The migratory habit of the Japanese eel, which reproduces in seawater and grows in freshwater, belongs to the migratory migration of the descending sea, and the opposite is the migratory fish of the river, which represents salmon.
Nihon 鳗鲡洄洄鳗鲡洄鳗
This is why people can accurately find the necessary places for eel fry and catch these eel fry that were intended to return to the place where their parents lived. These eels, of course, will never be able to return to their homeland and breed the next generation.
If the tide comes you don't come yet
Unfortunately, the resources of the eel genus are decreasing worldwide, and the Japanese eel, which should have returned with the Kuroshio Warm Current (also known as the Japan Warm Current), is becoming less and less in people's field of vision. The reason is that the number of wild eels itself has been decreasing during the process of human fishing, coupled with the market demand driven by huge profits, which has stimulated the excessive seizure of eel seed, resulting in the shrinking population of Japanese eels. This trend has been accelerated by various water conservancy projects and reclamation projects that have led to the destruction of estuarine habitats through which eels migrate.
In 2009, the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), which is the "spare tire" of Japanese eels, was listed in the CITES Convention prohibiting international trade, and was later classified as a critically endangered (CR) species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2013; in 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the Japanese eel and its second spare tire, Anguilla rostrata, as an endangered (EN) species, along with crested ibises and bluefin tuna The giant panda (reduced to vulnerable in 2016) is in a category. The three most prestigious families of eels, which once only looked across the ocean on three continents in Asia, Europe and North America, are now reunited on the IUCN Endangered Species List. At this moment, Ming Jianjun doubted the effectiveness of the implementation of the Convention on Biodiversity Conservation.
Three brothers of the Eel family, which live on three continents: Asia, Europe and North America, are reunited on the IUCN Endangered Species List
Every eel farmed comes from the depths of the ocean
Maybe you will say that the wild eels are gone, eat farmed!
The reality is that every eel seed used for farming is a wild individual hatched deep in the ocean (both European eels and American eels are born in the Atlantic). The protection of wild eel resources is not conducive, and the sustainable development of eel farming industry cannot be discussed.
Scientists believe that both european eels and American eels are most likely to have children at Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, but the mysterious migration routes of these two eels have not yet been fully revealed.
After the 1980s, with the rapid development of the eel breeding industry, Chinese and foreign scholars began to carry out extensive research on the artificial breeding of eels. Japan began artificial incubation research on Japanese eels as early as the 1950s, but due to the lack of understanding of the life history and ecological habits of Japanese eels, the first artificially bred eel seedlings were not available until 2002. By 2010, the eggs laid after the maturity of artificially bred eel seedlings will finally be artificially hatched, which brings hope to the realization of full captive culture of Japanese eels. However, the survival rate of artificial seedlings in that year was only 1%-4%, and the cost was as high as 1 million yen (60,000-70,000 yuan) a tail (the current cost was reduced to 5400 yen a tail), which could not be used for commercial aquaculture. European eels and American eels also do not achieve commercial captivity.
That is to say, although we nominally eat farmed eels, they are actually "farmed and not farmed". In fact, eel is the only species of fish that is large-scale aquaculture in China that relies entirely on the capture of wild fry.
The process of Japanese eels being fully farmed (Source: All Japan's textile breeding facilities)
Nevertheless, China has become one of the countries with the highest degree of industrialization of eel fishing and aquaculture in the world.
China's eel fry fishing this year entered a white-hot situation in mid-February, and the single-day eel fry catch was once as high as 500kg, most of which belonged to the endangered Japanese eel. According to the weight of 0.1-0.2 g per eel fry, the number of eel fry that Can be legally caught by fishermen in China is between 100 million and 200 million per year. The Japanese eel is likely to be the largest of the world's most endangered species that can still be "rationally utilized" as a wild resource.
At present, more than 70% of the world's farmed eels come from China, usually more than half are exported to Japan, and a considerable number is transported to South Korea, North America, Europe and other places in the form of grilled eels. In recent years, with the popularity of Japanese food and the continuous promotion of the domestic catering industry, the number of eels consumed in China has become more and more considerable. In 2017, China's eel production was about 260,000 tons, and the total export volume was more than 40,000 tons, while the apparent consumption of China's eels was close to 220,000 tons.
Efforts are being made to address the endangered status of the eel family. For example, in China, the Japanese eel belongs to aquatic animal fry with important economic value, the Fisheries Law and other laws and regulations have been stipulated in this, because of breeding or other special needs to fish, must be approved by the relevant fishery authorities, obtain a special permit, in the designated area and time, in accordance with the approved limit of fishing. However, the current development of statutory limits for eel fry fishing is still unscientific and prudent. However, cases of fishing Japanese eel fry using prohibited tools and methods without permission, as well as illegally purchasing eel fry, still occur from time to time in China, and illegal fishing and smuggling cases of eel fry in the Americas and Europe, which are far away from the ocean, are often related to China, posing a serious threat to the protection of aquatic resources.
Illegal fishing and smuggling pose a serious threat to eel resources
The ultimate fate of the Japanese eel is unknown. But it is foreseeable that the price of eel rice will continue to rise, and the conservation of eels will be like their mysterious routes into the ocean under the rivers and lakes, which is a long and long road.
In view of the endangered status of the wild population of Japanese eels and the fact that the aquaculture industry is "raised but not farmed", even in the face of such nutritious and delicious foodies, Kaisaki can only advise foodies to avoid consuming wild and farmed Japanese eels as much as possible at this stage. The same advice applies to European eels and American eels.
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