• Lack of public awareness of the Eel and the fate of the Eel
• Low numbers of release projects
• Lack of healthy Juvenile Eels available for community-scale restocking programmes
• despite the River Severn complying with the 40% escapement target there are still concerns that “the major pressure operating on eel populations is poor access to habitat because of obstructions”…”leading to high density-dependent mortality in the lower reaches”
• Poor hobbyist fishing practices

Via the following interventions:

1. Improving awareness of the Eel in communities in Bristol in 2017,18 and beyond
2. Sourcing glass eels from a sustainable fishery and providing a minimum of 60% of purchased eels for restocking. We will work with the Sustainable Eel Group to provide targeted, informed restocking efforts with the goal of moving densely stocked glass eels from the lower reaches, ongrowing these eels through this high-risk period and releasing them into more suitable habitats across the Bristol-Avon Catchment, including newly improved or accessible habitats. Bristol Fish Project intends to move from wild caught to bred glass eels as soon as these become commercially available, however we will remain committed to our participation in restocking programs, education and community projects.
3. Ensuring Eels are available, affordable and accessible for education and community projects (e.g. Eels in Schools) – through Eels for schools, children nurture the elvers over a five week period before releasing them into the local catchment. Whilst their elvers grow the children learn about the eels’ fascinating lifecycle, the challenges they have to overcome to make it up our rivers and what they, and all their classmates, can do to help save the eel.
4. Helping the recreational fishing community to adapt their behaviours towards a conservation approach.
5. Training people in innovative cultivation skills (aquaponics)

• production system data, including temperature, flow rates, water quality, etc are already recorded.
• increases in production capacity of both plant and fish production on site, (also measured against water consumption, water quality and energy consumption)
• eel throughput: we intend to release a minimum of 60% of elvers that we take in into the wild and retaining 40% for consumption at a minimum of 200g per eel, eel numbers will increase from an initial 500 in our pilot, and ~12000 from our current 1 system in year 1, to some ~30000 eels for restocking in year 4 once all 4 proposed systems are running at capacity (though factoring in normal attrition – wherein we nonetheless anticipate losses of <10%).
• Numbers of local children that through our regular engagements with the spawn to be wild / eels for schools programme
• Our engagement at Bristol Aquarium will give the opportunity for >10,000 pupils to engage with eel conservation.
• Our website and social media reach are closely monitored
• To capture the way opinion of eels and eel husbandry might change over time, people engaged in the project will be encouraged to take part in a survey – to gauge if this has altered post engagement.

The Sustainable Eel Mechanism allows us to sell a maximum of 40% of eels cultivated onsite into the food value chain for money, alongside our other revenue generating activities (see cashflow). Within our budget all of the funds generated by the sale of eels are used pay for all the activities required to cultivate more eels as well as deliver educational programmes relating to eel release programmes., rather than to profiteer from the cultivation of a critically endangered species. We reiterate here that we will move from wild-caught to bred-eels as soon as these become commercially available.