The Fight Over Canada's Most Valuable Fish

Priced at thousands of dollars per kilogram, baby eels have set off a global frenzy

- BY YUAN WANG PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARREN CALABRESE

Driven by demand in Asia, the price of glass eels has sometimes spiked to more than $5,000 per kilogram, more than a hundred times the price of lobster.

AROUND 9 P.M. ON April 10, 2024, James Nevin parked his truck next to the Shubenacadie Canal in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, scanning the banks for a good spot to fish.

There were others already there, so he decided against it; the year before, he had been threatened by other fishers holding guns.

For years, Nevin had earned his living, in part, fishing elvers—baby eels—in the rivers, streams, and canals of Nova Scotia. That spring, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) had announced it would not open elver fishing season, citing illegal fishing as a threat to stock health and commenting that the fishery “has also become the focus of harassment, threats and violence,” with incidents creating “an immediate threat to the fishery management and public safety.” For most people, to be fishing now would mean breaking the law.

Nevin was about to reverse his truck out of the parking lot when an unmarked vehicle cut him off, beaming its headlights into the dark. Two men got out of the car and shined a light in his face. He recalls them hitting the hood of his truck. Nevin thought he was being robbed. He tried to escape by backing up. (In a statement to The Walrus, DFO says Nevin “tried to evade officers while behind the wheel and struck a Nova Scotia Conservation Officer with a vehicle.”)