SINGAPORE: When I explain my research on the conservation status of the grilled eels Singaporeans eat, people are confused. “Why would this matter?” or “Eels can’t be endangered, right?”

Before I learned about the lucrative illegal eel smuggling industry and the various environmental threats eels face, that was also my response.

But, as my recently-published study showed, virtually all of the unagi sold in Singapore consists of endangered freshwater eels (anguillids) – likely moving the American eel toward critical endangerment.

Beyond unagi, many other seafood dishes in Singapore have less than savoury environmental impacts. WWF Singapore highlighted in 2021 that 75 per cent of the seafood species consumed in Singapore are unsustainable, with 120,000 tonnes of seafood eaten per year.

The problem of eel thus speaks to wider issues we face as consumers of seafood.

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE EATING

When we eat seafood in Singapore, we often don’t know what we’re eating and how it’s produced. Singapore imports over 90 per cent of the food we consume, and in 2024, 6 per cent of consumed seafood came from local farms.

Many things make identifying seafood difficult. Even when we can see what the animal is, like at wet markets or supermarkets’ whole fish sections, they can still be difficult to tell apart visually. It’s easy to tell if a whole, live eel is an anguillid rather than a moray, but less easy to visually differentiate certain anguillid species.

Seafood also can reach us far removed from how it once looked. For instance, unagi mostly arrives as fillets that are seasoned and grilled, eliminating all the features you&rsqu...