By 10am on the midsummer Day of the Ox, the city of Narita smells of charcoal and sugar. The cobbled road is thronged with visitors lining up to buy grilled eel, a traditional delicacy believed to cool the body and keep spirits up in the humid weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be so sad if it becomes extinct and we can\u2019t eat eel any more,\u201d says a customer sitting on the tatami-mat floor in Kawatoyo, a popular restaurant specialising in grilled eel, which has been operating for more than 115 years.<\/p>\n
For the past decade, he and his wife have driven for two hours to be part of this midsummer celebration, along with thousands of other Japanese people across the archipelago.<\/p>\n
Kabayaki-style eel, grilled with tare sauce, served at Kawatoyo restaurant in Narita. Photograph: Toru Hanai<\/p>\n
His fear is well founded. Of the 286,000 tonnes of eel eaten globally, 99% are American, Japanese and European eels, according to a recent study by Chuo University<\/a>. They are listed as endangered \u2013 and critically endangered, in the case of European eels \u2013 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).<\/p>\n Their numbers have plummeted due to habitat loss, pollution and the climate crisis \u2013 but also due to a thriving illegal trade in European eels. Worth about \u20ac2.5bn (\u00a32.1bn) a year<\/a>, eel trafficking is Europe\u2019s biggest wildlife crime. \u201cIf there is a demand, there will be trafficking,\u201d says Jos\u00e9 Antonio Alfaro Moreno, lead of Europol\u2019s anti-eel trafficking operation.<\/p>\n Live eels ready to be prepared for the table in Kawatoyo restaurant. Filleters cut the eels \u2018Chiba style\u2019, or head to tail, ready for grilling. Photograph: Toru Hanai<\/p>\n Despite a ban on eel exports from Europe 15 years ago, the fish are still ending up on plates around the globe \u2013 but in particular in Asia. More than half of seizures of European eel between 2011 and 2018 were destined for China<\/a>, a country that accounts for 70% of the world\u2019s total eel exports<\/a>. Japan is one of the largest consumers of eels globally and in 2024, an estimated 73% of the eel consumed in Japan was imported, according to the Japanese Fisheries Agency.<\/p>\n It hit me like a ton of bricks that a critically endangered species is on the shelf at all these retail outletsDr David Baker<\/p>\n So how has such a large illegal trade been allowed to prosper and what is being done?<\/p>\n To find out, more than 50 scientists, eel farmers, brokers, environmental activists, law enforcement officers, criminologists and eel importers were interviewed across Japan, Spain, Italy and France. International trade data, photographs and documents relating to the illegal trade were also analysed.<\/p>\n Traceability<\/p>\n The scale of the illegal trade did not really become clear until 2016 when Hong Kong authorities intercepted luggage filled with plastic bags of live fish and asked Dr David Baker of Hong Kong University to develop an eDNA test to identify exactly what it was. Baker discovered these writhing bags were filled with European eels.<\/p>\n \u201cIt hit me like a ton of bricks that a critically endangered species is on the shelf at all these commercial retail outlets [outside Europe],\u201d says Baker, who found that 45% of convenience store eels in Hong Kong were European. Baker shared his genetic test with authorities globally.<\/p>\n Similar eDNA toolkits are used now around the world to test eel shipments, including in a 2022 case in the US<\/a>. But, it is only one tool. Since the 1990s, many seafood products have become part of a traceable digital chain that can be followed from fisher to consumer. But there is no global system for eels.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no traceability,\u201d says Dr Hiromi Shiraishi of Chuo University. She says that even for Japanese importers who are trying to do their best and only source legal eels, \u201cit is very difficult to determine where these eels originally came from\u201d.<\/p>\n As a result, in 2017, Europol launched the Operation Lake taskforce with one goal: stop eel traffickers.<\/p>\n Investigators focused on poaching hotspots: France, Spain, Portugal and the UK. But as soon as one network was discovered, another emerged. Today, police chase traffickers across 30 countries, working with local authorities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new trend is the African route,\u201d says Moreno. Glass eels (the transparent, finger-sized, juvenile stage of European eels) are flown or ferried into Morocco, Mauritania or Senegal, where they can be \u201ccleaned\u201d into legal exports towards Asia. These transit countries also allow traffickers to refresh shipments, including changing water, at a lower cost than in Europe. Scientists are employed to keep the eels\u2019 death rate at 1% of the total shipment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is incredible how good they are at doing their job,\u201d says Moreno. \u201cIt is because it is a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n Smuggling methods also evolve. During Covid, when airport security relaxed, eels were hidden in suitcases<\/a> \u2013 one \u201cmule\u201d could carry 50kg spread across three bags. Now, the bigger profits are in fresh cargo shipments<\/a>. Packed between mussels or frozen meat, a single shipment can conceal 500kg of glass eels.<\/p>\n