LITHUANIA
Fish & Fish produces eel for the Dutch market
New products and expanded markets The natural stock of European eel is still suffering from severe depletion. According to ICES, glass eel and yellow eel recruitment declined steeply in the 30 years to 2010. In 2018 annual recruitment of yellow eel to European waters was less than a third of the average level in 1960 to 1979. Willem Dekker, an eel expert, currently working at the Department of Aquatic Resources, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, points to 2011 as a turning point when natural eel recruitment stabilised and small increases began.
T
he European eel is also a CITES Appendix II listed species, meaning that though it may not be threatened with extinction, trade is controlled. In the EU, international trade of European eel into and out of the EU is prohibited. The reasons for the decline in European eel populations are varied, though most are directly or indirectly caused by human interference, for example, commercial and recreational fisheries, hydropower stations on rivers, habitat modification, and pollution. Climate changes, predation, parasites and pathogens are among the natural factors affecting the European eel stock.
State-of-the-art production facility For eel consumers, therefore, farmed eels are the only alternative
to the wild catch. Eels are cultivated in several European countries. Currently, the only producer in Lithuania is Fish & Fish, a modern eel farm incorporating a state-of-the-art recirculation system producing eels of the highest quality. The eel life cycle is complex and starts as larvae in the Sargasso Sea, an area in the North Atlantic, from where they are carried a distance of some 5,000 km by currents to European shores where they metamorphose in to glass eels. As they enter fresh water the glass eels go through further changes becoming first elvers and then yellow eels. They remain in fresh water for between five and 20 years and then become silver eels which migrate back to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die. The glass eels form the stock that is used by the eel farming industry to produce eels. They are caught by fishermen in five or six European
Eels resting on the frame are an indication that conditions in the tank and in the surrounding environment are satisfactory and so the ďŹ sh can relax. 36
Andrius Breive, Vice-chairman
countries, but predominantly in France. Martynas Greviskis, Business Development Manager, relates how the company has developed a product for the Dutch market, where eel is popular. The product is a smoked fillet made from an eel that is between 120 and 200 g in size and has been specially created for the Netherlands. This product is made at independent processors who brand the product themselves if it intended for the domestic market, but sell it under the Fish & Fish brand if intended for export. Market preferences for eel tend to vary from country to country. In Germany, for example, the preferred size is 400 to 600 g, and in the Baltic states and Poland consumers want eels that are upward of 800 g in size. Fish & Fish supplies most of its production to the Netherlands from where buyers
send their trucks to pick up live eels. The company is also developing the domestic market in Lithuania as well as exploring opportunities in Poland, both of them growing markets. Mr Greviskis is experiencing that for some potential customers the only factor that counts is the price. And although the import of European eels into Europe is prohibited, cheap imports of other eels species whose quality and taste is not the same do find their way on to the market. At Fish & Fish there is a strong focus on quality and as a result the price is a little higher, making it more difficult to compete with illegal imports.
Eels produced for consumption as well as for restocking The company buys glass eels usually from France though also on occasion from the UK in December
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