For the third straight year, a Swedish research vessel trawling the Skagerrak and the Kattegat has found no glass eel at all.
The glass eel phase is the second stage of the severely threatened species’ evolution, after the larvae has come drifting to coastal waters on its long journey from the Sargasso Sea.
This annual test trawling done by the Swedish Board of Fisheries is primarily aimed at fry from North Sea herring, a control of the preceding fall spawning, but fry from sprat and glass eel are examined as a “by-catch”.
