“Workshop for Eel Resources in 2014” was held on October 6, 2014. The summary can be found here.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) designated the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) as an endangered IB species based on the IUCN Red list Categories and Criteria Version 3.1. The East Asia Eel Society strongly supports the decision by IUCN.

Glass eel recruitment and standing stock of Japanese eels have continued to decrease since the 1970’s and appear to have reached a historically critical situation in recent years. Very low levels of glass eel catches throughout East Asia since 2009 suggested a possible collapse of the Japanese eel stock, or even endangerment of the species. The industry depends on wild caught glass eels for seed for aquaculture along with imported glass eels of other species, mainly European eels. Declines in recruitment of the Japanese eel and the export ban on glass eels in Europe due the regulation of wildlife trade for conservation purposes by CITES have caused a crisis in this industry. Artificial seed production of the Japanese eel has been experimentally completed in 2010, but many technical problems still remain to be solved before it can be realized at a commercial scale. Therefore, we need to solely depend on the natural Japanese eel stock, at least, until the artificial production technique is finally established. The Japanese eel is an internationally very important aquaculture species in the East Asian region such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. The East Asia Eel Resource Consortium (EASEC), established in 1998, has been holding an annual meeting to share the latest information for the conservation and sustainable use of the Japanese eel. This year, however, due to the crisis of the Japanese eel stock in the last 3 years, the EASEC had an international emergency symposium on 19 March 2012 in Tokyo to discuss a possible strategy for the conservation of the Japanese eel as summarized below.