The El Palmar Fishermen’s Community and the Valencian Aquaculture company released 20,000 European eel fingerlings (Anguilla anguilla) this Wednesday in the Albufera natural park (Valencia) and contributed to its recovery, in an act that also had a vindicative nature to ask administrations for conservation measures based on science and practical experience that promote the sustainable growth of populations that have been depleted since the 1970s.
“In the end, it is about making the voice of fishermen and aquaculture heard. Economically we are not very strong as a sector, but we want the intrinsic value it carries, a gastronomic value and a cultural asset, to be respected. We cannot stop fishing. to the eel without further ado, we have to help,” said the secretary of the fishing community, Amparo Aleixander, in statements to the media during the release ceremony held this Wednesday in the natural park.
Aleixander has pointed out that without fishing there will be no data on the eel population to be able to control whether it is getting worse, while warning that “the eel larva has not yet been able to reproduce in captivity and fishing is needed to to be able to make eels.”
In that sense, he has defended that “a ban on fishermen is not the solution to the problem” of the population declines of eels and angleons in recent decades, caused by environmental and human factors. The fishing community asks that the sector be actively included in decision-making and the implementation of strategies that directly affect their activity and the health of aquatic ecosystems.
The fishing community has put on the table measures such as the installation of accesses that guarantee the entry and exit of eels in the Albufera, together with selective fishing that returns specimens of reproductive age to the sea or refers the hatchlings to facilities of aquaculture.
They also ask for improvement in water quality, reducing pollution and making regular water contributions; the conservation of natural habitats, preserving areas of riparian vegetation and building passages that allow fish access from the sea when the floodgates are closed, a vital issue in the case of the eel; the control of invasive species; and constant monitoring of the fish population, including fishermen, environmental authorities, scientists and the community in general, to establish continuous monitoring and establishing active management strategies.
Thus, the fishermen have expressed their “interest in preserving the eel” and have stressed that repopulations like this Wednesday’s should be carried out “continuously, among other of the many measures that could be taken to encourage the entry of eels.”
“The decline of the eel here in the Albufera area began in the 70s, coinciding with the pollution of the lake, and it has not been able to recover, but because the lake itself has not recovered,” said Amparo Aleixander. .
The president of the El Palmar Fishermen’s Community, Pepe Caballé, has spoken along the same lines, detailing that until the 1970s, between 25,000 and 40,000 kilos of eels were caught annually in l’Albufera, but that with the contamination of the lake , in the 70s they dropped to 3,000-4,000 kilos. Currently, the catch is around 5,000 kilos per year. “He shows that it is not a question of the fishermen’s catches, it is a question of the environment or the situation of the Albufera,” he commented.
Asked about the specific causes, Caballer pointed out that the community and the administrations do not agree on them, “because the reason for this decline or extinction of the eel in the Mediterranean and especially in the Albufera has not been investigated.”
“We want to make the institutions understand that we are collaborating for this sustainability,” continued the representative of the fishermen.
