ASSOCIATED PRESS • April 19, 2020
The price of one of the most lucrative marine resources in Maine – baby eels – has tumbled as fishermen grapple with the difficulty of working around constraints caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Maine is the only U.S. state with a significant fishery for the valuable baby eels, called elvers, used by Asian aquaculture companies as seed stock. Elvers were often worth less than $200 per pound until 2011, when international sources of the eels dried up and the Maine price jumped to nearly $900 per pound. They hit a high price of more than $2,360 in 2018. The catch is only selling for about $500 per pound now.