The book ‘Civelles Aturriennes’ is dedicated to the memory of 3 professional fishermen: Jacques Lespine, Robert Subréchicot and Gérard Jeannots who practised their métier with passion and sagacity in the Adour and Gaves basin (South-western part of France).

This book is about a species, or more precisely the fry of a species: the glass eel, known as pibale in the South-West of France. This much sought-after fry has had a major influence on the economy of estuarine and continental fisheries in this river basin, as well as those of many rivers flowing into the Bay of Biscay, the Celtic Sea and the English Channel.

Its fishing was as anchored in the cultural heritage of the South-West of France as the hunting of palombe. The introduction of European eel regulations in 2008 prohibited the capture of this fish for recreational fishing. After 2010, the European Union is asking Member States not to allow the transfer of glass eels outside their distribution zone, for reasons that are as yet unexplained or perhaps unmentionable. The economy of estuarine and continental fisheries has been damaged by this decision and it is estimated that, since 2011, the French glass eel fishery has lost more than 400 million euros if the export quota outside the EU for the Asian market had been kept at the level of the 14 tonnes allocated for the 2009 – 2010 season.

This book also talks about biology, behaviour of this fry, fishing methods used and, more broadly, about the latest scientific work on migration of silver eels to their spawning grounds in the centre of the Atlantic Ocean. It puts the impact of fishing on the species into a wider context: degradation of environments, permanent disappearance or degradation of areas suitable for the production of this species, and the numerous obstacles to its migration, which means that in the Mediterranean basin only 30% of potentially colonisable areas by eels are still colonised naturally (source CGPM 2024).