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Barry Costa-Pierce, Henry L. & Grace Doherty Professor and chair of Marine Sciences and director of ɫ����Ƶ’s Marine Science Center, presented at the Sargasso Sea Commission symposium on the “American Eel: Future Directions for Science, Law and Policy,” which was held October 23-25, 2015, in Portland, Maine.

The conference was organized by the University Of Maine School Of Law and the Marine & Environmental Law Institute of Dalhousie University. It was supported by the Sargasso Sea Commission, the Ocean Tracking Network and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Costa-Pierce presented “Capture Based Aquaculture of Eels: A Sustainable Ecological and Economic Way Forward” -- one of the three science keynote talks that opened the conference.

According to Costa-Pierce, the Maine elver eel fishery exploded onto the world scene in 2012 when harvest nearly reached $40 million and reports surfaced of fishermen receiving $2,000 or more per pound for the tiny baby eels that make their way up Maine's rivers each spring in just a 10 week fishery. Elvers leaped to become Maine’s second most-valuable commercial fishery, behind only lobsters and ahead of the combined value of clams, shrimp, herring and scallops.

The proceedings of the conference will be published in an upcoming issue of the Ocean & Coastal Law Journal.