Canada’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Joyce Murray admitted Tuesday the troubled fishery for baby eels — known as elvers — “got out of hand” this spring, blaming poachers attracted by easy money.
“We were enforcing the elver fishery. It just got out of hand, partly because of the ease of fishing and the value of the catch,” Murray said in Ottawa outside Parliament.
Murray closed the fishery in mid-April after unprecedented numbers of unauthorized harvesters descended on Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rivers.
They came for the tiny, translucent eels netted as they migrate from the ocean into freshwater.
Elvers sell for thousands of dollars
