| Title |
Do we protect freshwater eels or do we drive them to extinction?
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
SpringerPlus, September 2014
|
| DOI | 10.1186/2193-1801-3-534 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Takaomi Arai |
| Abstract |
Freshwater eels are important animals because they have a unique catadromous life history and are used as food resources. European, American and Japanese eel populations now are considered to be outside the safe biological limits and are seriously threatened with extinction. Therefore, the European eel was recently categorised as critically endangered by the European Union and the United Nations. One of the reasons for the drastic decline in eel populations is overfishing, which has caused a high demand for eel aquaculture; eel aquaculture completely depends on wild juveniles, and in contrast to animals, artificial propagation has not yet succeeded for the eels. Therefore, commercial eel industries are now considering tropical eels as possible replacement for European and Japanese eels to compensate for declining stocks. In this study, I attempt to examine the present status of the biology and stock of tropical eels. However, useful scientific research and information on the biology and stock assessments of tropical eels are lacking, a situation quite different from that for other temperate freshwater eels, which have been well studied for several decades with trends and recruitment patterns being on record. Nevertheless, the present tropical eel catch has been reported as being less than half that of 20 years ago. The present trends in eel stocks and utilization for human consumption suggest that all eel populations will decline to numbers that fall outside safe biological limits and will be seriously threatened with extinction without protection and conservation from strict enforcement of local and international laws. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 6 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Spain | 1 | 17% |
| Brazil | 1 | 17% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 17% |
| Unknown | 3 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 5 | 83% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 17% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 104 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| India | 1 | <1% |
| Austria | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 102 | 98% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 19 | 18% |
| Student > Bachelor | 15 | 14% |
| Researcher | 14 | 13% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 12 | 12% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 8 | 8% |
| Other | 12 | 12% |
| Unknown | 24 | 23% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 39 | 38% |
| Environmental Science | 14 | 13% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 9 | 9% |
| Engineering | 3 | 3% |
| Earth and Planetary Sciences | 3 | 3% |
| Other | 7 | 7% |
| Unknown | 29 | 28% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 54. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 December 2023.
All research outputs
#789,654
of 25,436,226 outputs
Outputs from SpringerPlus
#27
of 1,877 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#7,709
of 246,428 outputs
Outputs of similar age from SpringerPlus
#1
of 104 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,436,226 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,877 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 104 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.