Billion dollar babies
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eels are a popular food in parts of Asia, but they can’t be commercially bred in captivity. Coupled with trade bans to protect the highly endangered fish, this has led to baby eels becoming one of the most trafficked creatures in the world. BBC Eye and DOCDAYS investigate this global trade from the rivers of the UK to Haiti, Poland and Russia. We’re in the UK where the last remaining eel trader in the country has a licence to export baby eels to stock a conservation project in Russia. But questions have been raised over whether this is really what’s going on. We visit an investigative journalist in Poland who’s been looking into these exports to Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. With access to a member of an organised crime gang from Hong Kong, we hear how smugglers evade the French authorities to export baby eels to Asia. We also visit the Caribbean where a new and booming demand for glass eels is having a big impact on communities and politics in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A co-production from DOCDAYS Productions and BBC Eye Investigations.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | It's midday from the 3rd of October, 2024, and a plane has just crashed in a forest in Haiti. |
| 0:18.8 | Tall green banana plants surround a mangled wreckage, |
| 0:22.4 | a pile of white and yellow metal shards. |
| 0:25.2 | It's barely recognisable as an aircraft. |
| 0:29.0 | A crowd of people has gathered, |
| 0:30.9 | and yellow tape has been tied around the site to keep them back. |
| 0:34.0 | There's firefighters, police, |
| 0:36.1 | and safety workers in orange high-vis jackets and helmets. |
| 0:40.0 | There's also men wearing camouflage, black balaclavas and carrying guns. |
| 0:49.4 | Journalists are filming the scene. |
| 0:54.0 | This reporter tells his viewers that two people are believed to have been on the plane. |
| 1:00.5 | It wasn't a commercial flight, he says. |
| 1:03.8 | It was a small private plane. |
| 1:06.7 | And on board this plane was Zongi. |
| 1:11.5 | Eels. |
| 1:13.9 | You can see hundreds of tiny, worm-like creatures |
| 1:17.8 | scattered across the wreckage. |
| 1:19.8 | They're all about four centimetres long and pale in colour, |
| 1:23.5 | almost translucent. |
| 1:25.3 | Some are still moving, wriggling and flipping around. |
| 1:29.7 | It seems they were being transported live. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

