| Summary: | The critical status of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) population is an ongoing concern for fisheries and environmental managers. The European Eel Regulation approved in 2007 established the framework for the eel recovery, although incomplete knowledge about the stock hampers management that ensure the species’ sustainability. The present research investigated the dynamics of the European eel in a coastal lagoon, contributing to increase the knowledge about the species and to the assessment of the status of the stock in Portuguese inland waters. The information gathered on eel recruitment, and on the species exploitation and life history traits in a Portuguese brackish system, the Santo André lagoon, provided relevant data to develop stock assessment tools, and to analyse and understand the impact of management decisions on the local eel stock. Data on glass eel from the rivers Minho and Lis provide insights on recruitment trends in Portugal in recent decades and on the drivers of glass eel ingress into Portuguese coastal systems and were used as a proxy to the recruitment dynamics in Santo André lagoon. Results suggest that eel recruitment shows no evidence of a dramatic decline in Portugal, compared to trends reported for other European rivers. The dynamics of the eel population in continental waters was studied from a socio-economic and biological perspective in Santo André lagoon, where the eel yield is significant. The fishery statistics since the 1980’s and the field work conducted in 2011/12 and in 2015/16 have made possible to gather relevant information on the exploitation and biology and have provided the necessary data to characterize the local eel population. Data collected were used to calibrate a Bayesian state-space Integral Projection Model (SSIPM) that described the eel dynamics in the lagoon and estimated relevant eel biomass indicators. The eel population in the lagoon is male-skewed and characterized by a relatively young population (average age is 2.3 years), with only 13.7 % of ...
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