SEG’s side event, Eel-Legal Trade, drew a substantial audience of more than 150 delegates and served as one of the most talked about discussions of CoP20, offering an opportunity to examine the practical demands associated with monitoring and regulating trade in Anguilla species. The session was structured to present implementation as a series of discrete challenges needing to be overcome, and this approach attracted participants from national administrations, enforcement bodies, scientific institutions and observer organisations. Its emphasis on methodical explanation reflected SEG’s intention to support Parties by setting out the operational landscape that underpins international eel governance.

The sequence of speakers followed a clear progression designed to guide participants through different layers of implementation. After a brief introduction from SEG’s Alexander Barty, the session opened substantively with Kathryn Schleit of Oceans North, whose remarks described the everyday realities faced by fishers, farmers and communities that depend on eels; as well as the administrative and ecological pressures shaping national decision-making. This established a practical context for the discussion and allowed the panel to move naturally into the issues of governance, enforcement and scientific verification that are central to assessing any future regulatory pathway for anguillid species.

The third presentation, delivered by Deputy Director-General of the Environment, Patrick Child, on behalf of the European Commission, was significant in its implications for SEG’s aims and for the broader direction of CoP20. Patrick began by acknowledging SEG and Oceans North for convening a genuinely cross-sector forum and noted that the organisations’ engagement with fishers, cultural leaders and conservation practitioners had produced a policy briefing that articulated the lived pressures surrounding eel fisheries across regions. He observed that ‘almost everyone here has an eel story’, a remark that served to connect cultural, economic and ecological dimensions of the issue, and he stressed that the eel’s ‘extraordinary migratory journey, indifferent to borders’ demands a regulatory approach capable of matching that transboundary reality. Patrick also highlighted that consultations and research conducted by the EU and its Member States had echoed TRAFFIC’s findings: issues such as limited supply-chain transparency, data variability, and a high-value illegal trade were shared internationally, and therefore required solutions that extended beyond the confines of regional administration.

Patrick outlined the practical reasoning behind the EU-Panama proposal, drawing attention to the structural challenges that impede effective trade monitoring. He emphasised that enforcement officers cannot reliably distinguish glass eels or meat products by sight, noting that juveniles and prepared specimens are ‘visually indistinguishable’ across species, and that while DNA testing is increasingly valuable, it remains costly and unevenly available. These identification difficulties, he explained, create loopholes that illegal operators continue to exploit. Patrick took a moment to underscore that the eighteen-month transition period embedded in the proposal was proposed with legitimate fishers, farmers, and traders in mind; giving Parties time to prepare documentation systems, strengthen administrative procedures, and train staff before any new measure entered into effect. These remarks created a firm link between the policy debate and the operational issues explored later in the session, reinforcing SEG’s wider objective of balancing regulation, trade, and administrative feasibility.

Following Patrick’s intervention, Kathy Rock of TRAFFIC focused on methods for determining the impacts of the illegal eel trade and the challenges of monitoring it effectively. She described the complexities of tracing products through international supply chains, emphasising the importance of accurate, standardised documentation. Kathy highlighted tools such as EU TWIX data and other reporting systems that can help track imports and exports, while noting the limitations caused by inconsistent reporting, variations in product categories, and gaps in data collection. She discussed how these methods can inform assessments of trade impacts, helping to identify areas where management measures are needed, and stressed the need for harmonised approaches to monitoring that can provide reliable, comparable information across jurisdictions. Her presentation framed monitoring as a way to understand trade dynamics and guide evidence-based decisions for sustainable eel management.

Sheldon Jordan provided an operational perspective, focusing on the practical challenges enforcement officers face when implementing trade regulations. He discussed the costs and logistical burdens associated with species substitution and mislabelling; the difficulty of distinguishing between eel species as glass eels, processed meat products, and, increasingly, live yellow or silver eels; and the implications of these challenges for enforcement capacity. And then, he highlighted real-world examples of illegal trade through the Caribbean and explained the significance of oxygenation facilities in Canada in the international trade network. His presentation illustrated the implications of inconsistent trade guidelines on real-world implementation, showing that effective enforcement requires clear regulation; and that adequate training, tools, and inter-agency coordination can address high-value, high-risk trade scenarios.

Scientific verification and the potential contribution of applied tools were addressed by Natalie Schmitt of WildTechDNA, who detailed the current state of field-deployable DNA identification methods. She explained how these tools can support enforcement officers by providing rapid but reliable species-level information, while also noting the need for integration into standardised reporting procedures. Her remarks illustrated the promise of emerging technologies in the context of the CITES proposal and helped situate identification capacity within the broader discussion around species substitution and mislabelling. A brief visit to the restaurants of old-town Samarkand prior to the event was sufficient to take samples of local unagi kabayaki products and confirm the dependence of Chinese and Japanese aquaculture facilities on glass eel imports from the USA and Canada. The pressure was clearly shifting from the protected European eel to the unprotected yet similarly threatened species, A. rostrata.

Questions raised by delegates throughout the session and the conference more broadly reflected a shared interest in understanding how documentation systems, legal acquisition findings, verification procedures and scientific tools can be aligned across jurisdictions with very different administrative and technical capabilities. Participants sought clarity on how Parties might record mixed or processed products, how specimens should be tracked across complex supply chains and how the discussion might extend beyond the legality of trade to answer questions around responsible or sustainable management. These discussions indicated that although national contexts differ considerably, many Parties face closely related challenges when attempting to implement even straightforward regulatory requirements.

Andrew Kerr, Chair of the Sustainable Eel Group, concluded the session by synthesising the main themes and emphasising the importance of linking policy expectations with operational realities. He observed that the level of attendance and the active engagement from delegates demonstrated a clear appetite for technically grounded, non-contentious discussion that can support Parties irrespective of their positions on specific proposals. The event confirmed that there is considerable international interest in practical, system-based guidance for anguillid management and it established a strong foundation for SEG’s continued contribution during the intersessional period, particularly as work on monitoring and implementation develops in line with the mixed outcomes of the CITES CoP.