Split quota continues between Indigenous, commercial harvesters for contentious baby eel fishery
Open this photo in gallery:
Jay Pennell uses a net to dip for glass eels on the Gold River near Wasoqopa’q First Nation’s Gold River reserve on the South Shore of Nova Scotia on April 25.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Canada is reopening one of its most contentious fisheries for its second year under strict new rules, the federal government announced Wednesday, attempting to balance Indigenous rights and commercial livelihoods against mounting concerns about the survival of a threatened species.
The 2026 elver season – a high-value spring hunt for juvenile American eels, known as elvers, along Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rivers – will open around April 1, continuing the near-equal split of quota between Indigenous and commercial harvesters introduced last year.
The total allowable catch, first announced in February, will increase by 22 per cent, from 9,960 kilograms to 12,180 kilograms, marking the first change to the quota in 20 years.
“The Government of Canada is committed to sustainable and orderly fisheries that support rural, coastal and Indigenous communities,” the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) said in Wednesday’s news release.
It was a pointed choice of words for a fishery that is so disorder-prone that DFO cut the 2023 season short and cancelled it altogether in 2024. The fishery has been plagued by violence and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, fuelled by a landed value of $2,800 per kilogram, worth more per kilogram than bluefin tuna or beluga caviar.
