A small crowd has gathered at the edge of Rönne å in Skåne to participate in the annual eel release.
Almost a million eels are released all over Sweden every year, to compensate for the fact that they cannot get past the expanded power plants by themselves.
Right here in Rönne å, the small eels have a certain chance of both surviving and getting up the river and back out into the sea again – because the power plants are now switched off.
Swedish eel fishing will be completely stopped during the coming winter months. The greatest impact will be in the Öresund, where eels usually wander past on their way out of the Baltic Sea during this period.
"Don’t catch any eels at all” say the scientists, if you want to have any eels left in the future. But according to Sofia Brockmark at the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (HaV), very few people fish for eel in Sweden and they don’t catch very many.
The eel is critically endangered, and now research says that all human impact on the eel must stop. But in southern Sweden, eel fishing is seen as a cultural tradition, and every autumn large parties are organized where it is cooked and served in different ways. How is it that Swedes continue to eat the critically endangered species?
