Baby eels: the delicacy that could soon be banned from being eaten throughout the State

The European eel (Eel eelThe eel is critically endangered, and the Spanish government, pressured by some chefs, scientists, and the public, wants to stop the capture of both the eel and its juvenile, the elver, which is highly prized and sought after in gastronomy. Last autumn, the Basque Country banned its fishing, while neighboring regions, such as Asturias, continue to catch them despite complaints from the Basque fishing sector. In Spain, scientists like Arnau Subías, who runs the Instagram account @Gastrobio, have been warning about the situation for years, and points out that fishing has been prohibited in Andalusia since 2010. "Finally, there seems to be more awareness, but action should have been taken a long time ago by prohibiting fishing and regulating pollution in reservoirs," he says.

Because the species has a storybook cycle, we must remember it. The eel reproduces only once in its life, and it does so in the Sargasso Sea, a sea full of floating algae called sargassumIt is the only sea in the world that has no coasts, and it is located in the North Atlantic Ocean: to the east it has the Canary Current; to the west, Florida and the Bahamas.

It reproduces at great depths through external fertilization: the female eel releases her eggs into the sea, and the male eel fertilizes them by releasing sperm. The fertilized eggs rise to the surface and hatch; a small, leaf-shaped larva then emerges, called a larva. leptocephalusThis larva, carried by the currents, travels from northern Europe to Morocco, including the Mediterranean, Black, and Baltic Seas. "When the larva reaches the mouths of our rivers or coastal areas, it detects a change in salinity and that's when it transforms into an elver—small, transparent, glass elvers—which are prized in cooking," says Subías. It can spend between 9 and 11 months in larval form before reaching a river where it metamorphoses into an elver.

If we don't catch the elver, the fry (in Catalonia they are caught in the Ebro and Ter rivers), it transforms into a juvenile elver; then into a yellow eel and, finally, into a silver eel, which is when it will be sexually mature and make the reverse journey: it will dedicate all its energy to returning to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce and then die. "This entire cycle can take between 9 and 20 years, depending on whether it is female or male (males live shorter lives)," says Subías, who emphasizes that, due to its unique nature, the species has not been successfully bred in fish farms. "It's impossible to replicate it in captivity; the only thing that exists are fish farms for fattening eels or elvers, but nothing more." In other words, the elver is not like caviar, which is extracted from a species, the sturgeon, that is endangered but has been successfully bred in fish farms. Therefore, the caviar sold worldwide comes from sturgeon that complete their entire life cycle in fish farms. In contrast, elvers cannot be born in the wild (they can only do so in rivers) but are fattened in fish farms.

Now, let's talk about gastronomy. Eels are a sought-after (and expensive) dish, even though some say they taste like nothing, but they do have a delicious texture. Some say that if you close your eyes, you can't tell what you're eating, but it's true that they have a very good texture. However, this fact might not justify their price, nor the fact that such a delicate species is being placed in critical danger of extinction. In fact, eating any species in its juvenile stage "is barbaric, which is why there are so many regulations in fishing to ensure that commercially important species have a minimum catch size," says scientist Arnau Subías.

In short, elvers, like all fry, if you eat them small, you'll enjoy them for a second, but the species will never reproduce again.