French customs announced on Friday the seizure of 302 kg of live elvers, an eel fry threatened with extinction, sold at exorbitant prices in Asia on the black market while its export is prohibited outside the European Union. . The operation, carried out on the morning of February 9, made it possible to dismantle in the Val-de-Marne a clandestine breeding ground for packaging glass eels intended for the Asian market and to arrest three people.
Customs announced in a press release that their services discovered in the warehouse everything necessary for the packaging of fry for air transport. “About forty suitcases, weighing equipment, transparent pouches for transporting live animals, polystyrene boxes, a freezer with bottles of ice water, seven 25 kg bags of salt and oxygen bottles “.
Fry reintroduced into the Seine
Agents from the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) then assisted the customs officers in measuring, weighing and releasing the fry. “These were reintroduced into the Seine the same evening in order to promote the preservation of as many of them as possible”, they add. The investigation was entrusted to the Service d’Enquêtes Judiciaires des Finances (SEJF). The three people arrested in the warehouse were remanded in custody. They face up to 10 years in prison.
This smuggling of European eel called “Anguilla Anguilla” is one of the causes of the fall in thirty years of 75% of its population. It has been protected since 2009 under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). Its fishing, partly intended for consumption and partly for restocking the rivers, is very strictly regulated, with a system of licenses and quotas.
Any export prohibited
In 2010, the European Union banned all export of glass eels outside its borders. The global decline in eel populations and the means put in place to save them have encouraged poaching and created a huge black market that would be more profitable than drug, human and arms trafficking. The estimated annual value of the illegal traffic of glass eels from Europe to Asia is estimated at three billion euros.
It is negotiated between 700 and 900 euros per kg in France and up to 5,000 euros in Asia. Since the beginning of the year, the customs services have seized 560 kg of live glass eels and 28 kg of frozen glass eels. The February 9 catch alone exceeds the total seizures of last year, when 256 kg of glass eels were intercepted by the customs services.