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Eel market sizzles as prices soar in Maine

Associated Press

  April 03, 2012

A worldwide shortage has buyers paying top dollar for the baby American eels, which are imported in infancy from Maine to Asia to be raised in farm ponds. A pound of eels should be worth around $30,000 on the open market once grown to market size, according to one dealer. Prices fluctuate all the time, but nobody’s seen them shoot up the way they have over the past two seasons. Last year, at $891 per pound, elvers (or baby eels) became Maine’s fourth most-valuable wild fishery.

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