The Canadian Committee for a Sustainable Eel Fishery, Inc. (CCSEF) is a non-profit corporation created to represent the glass eel fishery of the American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) in Canada. CCSEF promotes a long-term sustainable eel population through responsible fishery rules, habitat protection, monitoring of stocks and other scientific research, education and promulgation of accurate information of the eel stocks in Canada and, in particular, the Atlantic provinces. It collaborates with Canadian and international individuals and groups supporting conservation of the American eel and other anguillid species.

Some of the conservation and research activities that CCSEF or members have supported include:

• Elver recruitment survey of the East River-Chester directed by DFO – it is the longest glass eel recruitment study in North America)
• Stocking of glass eels in Lake Ontario and New York under Ontario Power Generation biologist Ron Threader
• Stocking of eels in Lac Moran, Quebec by M. George Lizotte (1997)
• Publication of papers presented at the International Eel Symposium of the American Fisheries Society meeting in Quebec in August 2014
• Contribution of glass eels to research of Dr. John Casselman and Courtney V. Holden, Queen’s University

The glass eel fishery in Canada is licensed and enforced by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Currently there are 9 licenses (each employing several fishers) to harvest glass eels in tidal river estuaries in the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland to which eels return each spring after being spawned in the Sargasso Sea and drifting north in the Gulf Stream. All fishing activity, transportation, holding and sale of glass eels by fishers is strictly regulated under license conditions and monitored.

Canadian industries that are supported by the glass eel fishery include aquaculture and processing.

This website will act as an informational resource for members and others- a forum to find facts and ways to support a sustainable eel fishery.