Birth and Larval stage

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Maturation and Spawning

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Value of elvers per pound, 1985
$25
Value of elvers per pound, 2013
$1821
Maturity rate in the wild
15-20 years
Artificial maturity rate
10-12 months
Number of eel farms in America in 2005
3
The value of Chinas total aquatic exports
$94 billion
How much of those aquatic exports are eel?
8%
How much is China's annual export of eels worth?
$790 million
Where does Japan get their eels?
90%
Japan has eels farms of its own, but still buys 90 percent of the eel coming out of China
How much of the eel from China ends up in the U.S.?
2,130 tons
The U.S. imported this much processed eel in 2012
The American Eel: Long Distance Traveler
The American eel, Anguilla Rostrata, is born in the Sargasso Sea and can travel thousands of miles before reaching and entering freshwater as a glass eel or elver. In the U.S. it is caught in this baby stage only in Maine and South Carolina and almost always ends up sold to the Asian eel farm market, at big profits, to be grown to maturity and sold again, at big profits. Here’s the irony—some of these eels ultimately come back to the United States after being raised and processed in China, Taiwan, Korea or Japan. If you’ve eaten eel in an American sushi restaurant, you could well have had what was once a Maine elver. Some wonder, why not grow those eels out in America or even Maine?
SOURCE: staff research, news reports
INTERACTIVE: T.E.D. Andrick