Eels and Elvers

November 7, 2025·41 min·3 clips

Europe's eel population has declined over 90% since the 1980s, a catastrophic collapse driven by human activity.

The Severn is uneasy around midnight. On its banks, Richard Cook describes a river with real force, strong enough that old fishermen once tied themselves to trees. Everyone is waiting for a reason. Glass eels have come from spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea, carried for four thousand miles before they reach this moonlit stretch of water. They are tiny, strange and hard to ignore. In the early hours, the host watches clusters of elvers with brown and pink bodies, red lines and bright visible eyes. Fishing here is tightly controlled. According to the Environment Agency, 95 people were authorised to fish for elvers in the Bristol Channel between February and April this year. Dave sees more than a catch. For him, the night work keeps river knowledge alive: local skill, tide sense, darkness, patience. Conservation makes the picture less tidy. Dave argues that putting elvers back may not help much if weirs and locks stop them getting inland. The River Froome shows the problem clearly. Andrew Kerr of the Sustainable Eel Group explains how industry, mills and altered waterways have made the eel's journey harder. Commerce sits next to recovery throughout the episode. Elver fishing leads into aquaculture, standards for eel businesses and the awkward question of whether taking some fish can help others survive somewhere else. Restaurants get pulled in too. A chef at Providence in Los Angeles says giving up eel is not difficult, because chefs can shape what people choose to eat. Through one slippery fish, the programme looks at rivers, appetite, migration and whether human behaviour can change before the eel disappears.

As heard by us

A moonlit journey from the Severn into the eel's wider story, with a careful reckoning over what humans owe this fish.

An eel's journey from the Sargasso Sea to the Severn becomes a clear, quietly urgent study of how waterways, fishing traditions and appetites shape its chances of recovery.

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You follow glass eels through moonlit Severn water and into the choices shaping their future.

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