Abstract
Freshwater eels (Anguilla spp.) are an important food resource and support large-scale aquaculture in some oriental countries. Taiwan’s climate is ideal for eel stocks living in the wild and for aquaculture. Indeed, the country’s aquaculture industry, which was initiated in the 1960s and peaked in the early 1990s, contributed greatly to Taiwan’s economic development at the time, though much of that production has since been transferred to mainland China. Despite their economic importance to humans, however, many people are not that familiar with eels, so this chapter supplements material presented elsewhere in this book by documenting aspects of eel distribution and biology, mythology, cuisine, etc, in Taiwan.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the National Science Council of the Republic of China for long-term financial support for eel research, Brian Knights and Yu-San Han for providing unpublished data, Nico Jose Leander for producing much of the artwork, and Brian M. Jessop, Chu-Fa Tsai and book series editor Andrew I. L. Payne for comments, including grammatical improvements, on various earlier drafts.
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Tzeng, WN. (2014). Freshwater Eels and Humans in Taiwan. In: Tsukamoto, K., Kuroki, M. (eds) Eels and Humans. Humanity and the Sea. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54529-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54529-3_9
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