Eel, a coveted and threatened treasure of Japanese gastronomy

After skewering the eel that he just cut, Tsuyoshi Hachisuka places on his barbecue this essential fish in Japanese cuisine, considered an endangered species and whose scarcity triggers prices and attracts the attention of traffickers.

This snake-like fish, disgusting to some, is fished and consumed all over the world. But it is particularly appreciated in Asia and the Japanese archipelago, which has numerous specialized restaurants like this one in Hamamatsu, in the department of Shizuoka (center).

The thorns found on funerary monuments in Japan attest that the eel was already consumed several thousand years ago. Since the 17th century, it has generally been eaten in kabayaki, grilled skewers soaked in a soy sauce and mirin (rice liquor).

Hachisuka, 66, has used the same sauce since he opened his restaurant more than 40 years ago. “I fix it on the fly, it can’t be too sweet or too salty,” he explains to AFP.

But the remote presence of the eel in Japanese culinary traditions, and the fact that it cannot be bred in captivity, have placed this species in a critical spot, with direct consequences on its price.

“A plate of unaju (eel on a rice base) is currently worth almost three times more than when I started,” says Hachisuka.

The mysteries of the eel

The capture of elvers, the baby eel, fell by 10% compared to the 1960s in the archipelago and the eel of Japan was inscribed in 2014 on the red list of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature ( IUCN).

But its complex and still little-known life cycle makes protection tasks difficult.

The mystery of the origin of the eel has fascinated researchers since ancient times. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who studied them 2,300 years ago, thought that they appeared spontaneously in the mud, having never found the remains of larvae of this species.

“We think that the eel appeared about 60 million years ago near the island of Borneo,” explains Mari Kuroki, from the department of aquatic biosciences at the University of Tokyo.

Later it spread throughout the world. Currently, its 19 species and subspecies wave through all the oceans of the planet, including the Antarctic.

It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that scientists discovered that European and American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, near Cuba, from where their larvae drift to the continents.

“As the drift of the continents made the ocean currents evolve and moved away the life and spawning areas, the eel adapted,” says Kuroki.

But the location of the breeding grounds for many of the other species is still unknown today.

The guilty humans

In 2009, a Japanese scientific expedition formally identified for the first time that the species called “Japan eel” breeds west of the Mariana Islands, between 2,000 and 3,000 kilometers off the coast of the country.

When they approach the coasts, the larvae evolve into elvers and reach the estuaries and rivers of Japan, but also of Taiwan, China and South Korea, where they become eels and live an average of between 5 and 15 years before to go back out to sea to lay eggs and die.

Scientists point to a set of factors, all attributable to man, to explain the decline in the eel population on a global scale, such as overfishing or the alteration of ocean cycles linked to climate change.

The deterioration of freshwater habitats or contamination also works against their survival. And the construction of hydroelectric dams disturb migrations and cause the death of many specimens in their turbines.

To try to better manage this resource, scientists from the four countries where the Japanese eel mainly lives have been cooperating since 2012 and established fishing quotas in 2015.

But these restrictions, together with the European Union’s ban on exporting elvers, led to the development of poaching and world traffic, especially from Europe and the United States.

US elver farms currently supply more than 99% of the eels consumed in Japan.

“White gold”

In 2020, reported fishing and legal imports of elvers to Japan represent less than 14 tonnes in total, according to the Japan Fisheries Agency. But there are more than 20 tons in rearing, a difference that denotes a lucrative parallel economy.

The situation is more serious according to the organization WWF Japan, which estimates that between 40 and 60% of eels raised in the country come from illegal affiliates.

In Hamamatsu, the brackish waters of Lake Hamana, located by the sea, provide an ideal environment for eels and every year between December and April, elvers are fished under the greatest discretion.

“Eel is the most expensive fish in this lake,” says Kunihiko Kato, a 66-year-old fisherman, picking up the long net with a conical end that he uses to catch elvers. “So let’s be careful” so as not to wake up the greedy, he says.

The price of elvers, sometimes called “white gold”, fluctuates strongly depending on the catch. The kilo was trading at an average of 1.32 million yen ($ 11,640) in 2020 according to AJP, but in 2018 it reached a record high of 2.99 million yen ($ 26,370).

Annual eel consumption in Japan was divided by three from its record high of 160,000 tonnes in 2000, according to official figures. Its increasingly high price reduces the chances of consuming it, says Senichiro Kamo, a seafood wholesaler based on the shores of Lake Hamana.

“There was a time when all the barbecues and meals served in hotels in the area were based on eel,” recalls Kamo, for whom this fish represents 50% of his turnover.

“They were also used in food trays sold at stations, but since their price has tripled, it is no longer possible,” he says.

“Appreciate each eel”

To favor its conservation, Japan began in the 1960s investigations for its artificial reproduction.

In 2010, scientists were able to obtain two successive generations of eels in the laboratory for the first time, a breakthrough.

But these “artificial” eels are still far from being able to be introduced into the market, recognizes Ryusuke Sudo, researcher at a specialized center of the AJP in the Izu peninsula (central Japan).

“The biggest obstacle at the moment is that the cost of this method is too high”, mainly because of a low reproduction rate that requires human intervention for each individual and a longer growth time of the elvers than for the specimens fished in nature, says Sudo.

The Japanese government has set a goal that this device can be used on a large scale by 2050.

But Mari Kuroki believes that the best way to save the species is to collectively become aware. “You have to appreciate each eel we eat (…) being clear that it is a precious natural resource.” (I)