Kaohsiung, Nov. 18 (CNA) Authorities at Kaohsiung airport recently seized over 60,000 live young eels that two Taiwanese travelers were attempting to smuggle out of the country, police said Friday.
The 66,120 glass eels were in the luggage of the travelers, surnamed Yang (楊) and Hung (洪), who were booked on a flight to Hong Kong on Nov. 16, the Kaohsiung precinct of the Aviation Police Bureau said in a press release Friday.
The ray-finned eels were packed in 12 sealed plastic bags that contained water, and there were about 2,755 eels in each bag, which were found by inspectors when suspicious images showed up on the luggage scanners, the airport police said.
According to the police, glass eels, dubbed "white gold," can only be found in the wild during a short harvest period in Taiwan, and the 66,120 that the two travelers were attempting to smuggle out of the country had a market value of around NT$2.64 million (US$84,797).
Since 2007, export of the eels has been banned during the harvest season -- Nov. 1 to March 31 the following year -- to protect Taiwan's fishery resources amid declining stocks, the aviation police bureau said.
Following the confiscation of the 66,120 eels on Wednesday, the case has been handed over to the Fisheries Agency for further investigation, the bureau said.
In the life cycle of the glass eels, they migrate from the ocean to the rivers as larvae and are transparent in appearance when they enter the estuaries. They later start to pigment and become elvers, at which point they move upstream and grow into adults that have a yellowish-white belly.
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