The overall vision of the EEL-HATCH consortium is to establish breeding and hatchery technology for future commercial production of glass eels, leading to sustainable and profitable eel aquaculture.
At present, eel farming relies exclusively on wild-caught glass eels and there is an ever-increasing demand for a captive-based fry production for sustainable aquaculture of this endangered species. Captive breeding and larval rearing to the glass eels stage would overcome this obstacle for the industry. However, eels do not reproduce naturally in captivity due to complex hormonal control mechanisms that relate to their long migration to native spawning areas in the Sargasso Sea.
EEL-HATCH will enhance existing technology to breed European eel and raise larvae to the glass eel stage. Thus, captive breeding and hatchery technology will generate a new commercial activity that ultimately can re-establish the highly profitable eel market for the Danish and European aquaculture industry.
The EEL-HATCH consortium has seven partners and is lead by Technical University of Denmark. Learn more about the EEL-HATCH partners
The EEL-HATCH projects that extended from 1 April 2014 till 30 September 2017 has been followed up by the project Improve technology and scale-up production of offspring for European eel aquaculture (ITS-EEL).
Both project are supported financially by Innovation Fund Denmark.