Protecting the Vanishing American Eel

Ontario has been working to protect the American eel.

The American eel is often confused with the sea lamprey. (The sea lamprey is a non-native parasite fish that kills Great Lakes salmon and trout.) The American eel spends part of its life in the Great Lakes, and part of its life in the ocean. It is an important part of the diversity of life in Lake Ontario and offers valuable clues about the health of the ecosystem.

The American eel is an unusual species:

• it has only one spawning location, in the Atlantic Ocean;
• young eel larvae drift in ocean currents, then enter fresh waters (such as the St. Lawrence River) to feed and grow for up to 25 years;
• every eel that migrates into the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario system matures into a female;
• eels from the Lake Ontario – St. Lawrence River system are the largest in the species’ range and, at one time, made a large contribution to the population’s spawning stock;
• after a round trip lasting several decades and covering thousands of kilometres, the mature eels migrate back to their birthplace in the Atlantic Ocean, where they spawn and die.

The American eel has a long history as a commercial fish species for people who live along the upper St. Lawrence River and the shores of Lake Ontario. Ontario commercial eel harvests peaked at over 227 metric tonnes (500,000 pounds) in 1978. Harvests between 1984 and 1993 remained stable between 103 and 124 metric tonnes (between 228,000 and 273,000 pounds) per year. Since 1993, eel harvests have gone down: in 2003, the harvest was less than 14 metric tonnes (30,000 pounds) with a landed value of less than $75,000.

The American eel is has been in serious decline since the mid-1990s. Now, the American eel is in danger of extinction in the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River part of its normal range. These waters are co-managed by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The decline of the American eel is due mostly to human activity. The eel harvest reduced the eel population, hydroelectric dams block eel migration routes while turbines kill individual eels, and changing environmental and climatic conditions connected to global warming threaten their habitat.

An eel ladder was installed at the R.H. Saunders Hydroelectric Station on the St. Lawrence River near Cornwall in 1974 by the Ministry and Ontario Power Generation (OPG), to assist with the migration of eel upstream of the dam.

Since 1998, the number of young eels migrating up this eel ladder has gone down, from more than one million fish per year in the early 1980s to fewer than 15,000 per year.

Ontario has been working to protect the American eel by:

• cancelling the commercial fishing quota, starting in 2004;
• proposing changes to regulations for Fisheries and Oceans Canada to close the eel sport fishery;
• working with OPG to find safer passage for eels migrating across hydro dams on the St. Lawrence River; and,
• working with OPG and the Ontario Commercial Fisheries’ Association to stock young eels into the upper St. Lawrence River.

Other actions to protect the American eel:

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Ontario, Quebec and the eastern provinces are working to develop a coordinated action plan to protect eels.
• The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is leading an inter-state initiative to protect the species, and manage eel fisheries along the U.S. Atlantic coastal states.
• The American eel is being considered for designation under both the Canadian Species at Risk Act and the Ontario Endangered Species Act.

For more information about efforts to protect the vanishing American eel in the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River region, contact Alastair Mathers, Ministry of Natural Resources, (613) 476-8733.