Isn't it better just to place them where the Environment Agency is saying you can place them?

Well, l- last year, the proposal the Environment Agency wants us to, uh, undertake is to put them where we have already stocked last year.

And this doesn't make any sense at all, because by putting them in the same place, you don't increase the eel population.

And in fact, uh, the evidence is that you have a increased mortality of the glass eels or the eels that you put back in, into an area that is already heavily stocked.

Are you trying still to take that route and apply for export licenses for these eels potentially to go to Russia?

Yeah, I mean, they...

In the project in the Baltic to support the recovery of the eel, there was 250,000 hectares to restock.

Compare this to restocking the, the Severn, which is only six and a half thousand hectares.

[alarm blaring] Why is that alarm going off?

We have to have an alarm here to measure the oxygen levels, and the, and the temperature, and the water flow, so, yeah, if the power goes off, then we've got to get down here in a hurry.

A project that's adding glass eels to the depleted Vistula and Curonian Lagoons.

The plan is that it will take some eight to twelve years before there's sufficient to escape to the sea.

Once we've reached that escapement target, it will be possible to harvest some of the fish in the lagoon.

It's a small piece of Russian territory by the Baltic Sea bordering Poland and Lithuania, and it has two coastal lagoons.

This is the Vistula Lagoon and the Curonian Lagoon.

The Russians have a really forward-looking stocking program for these lakes.

It is a fantastic project.

This will be probably one of the largest projects to support the recovery of the European eel in Northern Europe.

They have a very well-developed eel management plan.

It is a huge project.

He maintains that it's purely a conservation project.