Seizure of illegal eel shipment. (Photo: Civil Guard)
Over 100 kilos of eels destined to Hong Kong intercepted
SPAIN
Monday, April 23, 2018, 23:50 (GMT + 9)
The Civil Guard conducted another seizure of eels that were to be illegally marketed. This time there were 113 kilos of elvers intercepted at Barajas Airport that were destined for Hong Kong.
The fish were alive and it was possible to reintroduce them into a river in Guipúzcoa.
This operation is a continuation of the one developed last February, when 310 kilograms of European eels (Anguilla anguilla) were intercepted and exported to the Asian continent.
The Civil Guard stresses that this action is the result of the controls established after detecting the dramatic decline of this species due to illegal fishing and the loss of its habitat.
The period of greatest danger for illegal fishing of this fish extends between November and April, which is when in the phase of elvers enter the Spanish rivers from the Sargasso Sea, in the heart of the Atlantic, the only site of the planet where the eels reproduce.
The detection of this illegal lot happens after another one that occurred at the end of March, when it was possible to prevent the departure of 600 kilograms of eels that had been declared as octopuses and were destined to Hong Kong.
When inspecting the shipment it was discovered that although several boxes contained the declared goods, those located at the bottom had eels inside, conditioned with ice bottles so that they arrived alive at the end point.
Last month, the Civil Guard dismantled an organized band based in Spain and with ramifications in Portugal and Morocco, which was engaged in the illegal export of eels to China and Japan. In this operation, ten people of Chinese, Spanish and Moroccan nationality were arrested, and searches were made in several buildings in Gijón, Piedras Blancas and Soto del Barco, in addition to Algeciras, where 364 suitcases were ready to send more than 5,000 kilos of elvers to China.
The European eel has been included in Appendix II of the CITES convention and the European Union has set a zero quota for the import or export of this species. For this reason, the intervention carried out at the Airport in Madrid entails the performance of smuggling.
Related article:
- Eel smuggling network dismantled
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