KAMOURASKA, Canada — Standing in tall rubber
boots in mud smeared with gooey algae, Bruno Ouellet tugs on massive
nets strewn across the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, hoping to
snag just a few eels. "The fishing isn't good," the
47-year-old says. "In the early 1980s, you could catch 1,000
eels in a cage, but today I've only got three and I have to work just
as hard."
For centuries, aboriginals and later French
colonists fished eels from the shores of the mighty waterway at
Kamouraska, Quebec about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of
Montreal.
Then suddenly, the eel population collapsed and
only a handful of fishermen are still tending their nets here, from
September to October each year. The eels of this region reproduce in the
Sargasso Sea in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. The larvae migrate towards Canadian shores
where they are fished, or they go on to inland lakes and rivers where
they grow into adult eels that eventually return to the waters near
Bermuda to start over the cycle.
Researchers and fishers noted a decline in the
population starting in the 1980s. "It's a freefall," said
Guy Verreault, a biologist with the Quebec ministry of natural
resources.
Pollution in the Great Lakes is partly to
blame. Also, 12,000 dams and other obstacles were
erected along the eels' migration route on the Saint Lawrence River
towards the Great Lakes over the years, hindering their reproduction. "Of the eels that do manage to overcome
these obstacles (on their way to freshwater basins inland), 40
percent later die in the hydroelectric turbines on their way back to
the Sargasso Sea," Verreault said.
Twenty years ago, fishermen caught up to 400
tonnes of eels per year, but now their annual catch is less than 40
tonnes, he estimated. The odorous, fatty white meat was smoked and
exported to Germany and Japan. But nowadays, the lean harvest is
mostly sold to Chinatowns in North America.
The government of Quebec in 2009 bought back
most of the eel fishing permits issued over past decades, in an
effort to prevent a total collapse of the fishery. Today, there are just 14 licensed eel fishers
in these parts, including Gertrude Madore, a 75-year-old redhead who
was the first and maybe the last woman to be licensed by the
province. In the past, fishermen would cross the muddy
beach on horseback to bring the eels back to their village. "There
were spots where the horses got stuck so we had to haul the eels out
in sacks on our backs; they would wiggle and we'd fall face first
into the sludge," Madore recalled. "Today we have tractors, but there are no
more eels," she said.
According to Canadian government statistics,
the number of young eels entering inland lakes and rivers through the
Saint Lawrence has dropped to less than three percent of the numbers
recorded in the 1980s. During the same period, the population has
remained stable in other North American coastal waters. Biologist Louis Bernatchez of Laval University
in Quebec City believes the divergence in the population numbers
inland and in coastal waters in North America may be due to genetic
changes. "It takes an eel with specific genetic
qualities to make it to the upper Saint Lawrence river," he
explained. "Generations of eels were crushed in electric
turbines, and so these (robust) qualities are less present among this
population."
"If it continues, the eel will disappear
from these parts," he said. Biologists say if it can be done it will take
25 to 30 years for the eel population to bounce back in these waters.
On the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, the
last eel fishers tend their nets, breathing in the salt air blowing
from the ocean and listening to geese squawking above as they begin
their annual migration south for the winter.
"My children and my grandchildren will
continue to fish. One day, things will change back to the way they
were," Madore said hopefully.
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© 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.
