Nearly half of juvenile Japanese eels farmed in the country may have been illegally caught, according to a Kyodo News survey. The Japanese eel is an endangered species.
The survey, released Wednesday, found that 45.45 percent of young eels caught in Japan between November 2016 and April 2017 may have lacked prefectural authorization or were underreported.
Experts are calling for tighter resource management of the species, mainly found in East Asia, as they are designated as being at risk of extinction by the Environment Ministry and the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to deteriorating habitat conditions and overfishing.