How Many Elvers in a Kilo?

Do you know what an elver is?

How many elvers do you think you would get in one kilogram?

Today I went to a sustainable fishery at Over, Gloucester with The Get Grubby Gang to learn about glass eels or elvers as they are officially called.

Elvers start their life as eggs in the Sargasso Sea in the western Atlantic Ocean. The eggs are transported to Europe on the tidal currents, this can take around 2 years. On the way the eggs hatch but less than 1% survive. These grow in size but are transparent which is why they are also known as glass eels. The elvers or glass eels are then washed into estuaries along the European coasts. The small fish like to move from the salt water environment into fresh water rivers and ditches inland.

Elvers used to be a common creature in our waterways but sadly since the 1980's they have been in decline so much so that scientists have listed them as critically endangered. Over the last 50 years thousands of metal and concrete barriers such as weirs, barriers and flood defences have been built on waterways in the UK and throughout Europe. These prove a big problem to young eels who need to move upstream to fresh water rivers and ditches to mature.

The Sustainable Fishery pays elvermen to catch young elvers from The River Severn and other waterways. These are brought to the fishery and weighed, they are then cleaned and sorted to remove any other creatures or dead elvers. Sixty percent of the elvers are transported by plane to countries such as Ireland, Germany and Denmark where they are used to restock rivers, amazingly one plane load can contain up to 3 million elvers. The remaining 40% are sold for human consumption and the money raised from these is used to fund the sustainable fishery.

As a result of projects such as the one we visited today elver numbers in the River Severn have increased each year for the last 5 years, in 2014 elver numbers were higher than in the 1980's when the decline started.

At the end of our visit today we were given a small number of eels to release into rivers near where we live. It felt great to be helping play a small part in conserving elvers.