As the sun sets over the calm waters of the IJsselmeer, north of Amsterdam, holidaymakers crowd into restaurants to eat the local speciality.
The fortunes of the lakeside town of Volendam have been built on the fat and tasty flesh of the eel.
Fisherman Jaap Bond, 61, remembers a time when the eel catch was plentiful.
“It was full of eels here,” he says. “In the good times you could catch 1,000 kilos a day.”
In his lifetime, Jaap Bond has watched the number of eels in the waters off Volendam dwindle to almost nothing.
Now, in an effort to preserve the eel, the Dutch government only permits fishing for four months of the year.
“They catch the small eels near Spain and France and the coast when they come from the Atlantic,” says Mr Bond.
“They take them off to farm them. When the farming started, there were fewer eels. And now here, it’s over for fishing.”
Some think of the eel as a creepy, slimy creature. Others consider it the best health food in the world.
But whatever your views on the eel, you should not take it for granted.
Research shows that the number of eels in Europe has dropped dramatically and they are now classed as a critically endangered species.
In many European countries, demand for this delicacy remains strong and eels continue to fetch a high price.
A short walk across Volendam is the Smit Bokkum smokery, established in 1856.
Evert Smit is the latest in a long line of men who have made their living gutting and smoking eels.
“This is one of the last traditional smokehouses in Holland,” he says.
“The [eel] population has dropped so dramatically in the last five years. What we have in the lake is now only 1% of that 20 years ago.”
Although much is known about the European eel, the exact location of its spawning ground in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic remains a mystery.
Baby eels are carried thousands of miles back to Europe on the Gulf Stream. Here they become glass eels and swim into freshwater lakes, where they mature before re-entering the sea to breed.
But pollution, the damming of waterways and overfishing, especially of glass eels off the coast of southern Europe, have all contributed to a sharp decline in eel numbers.
BBC © 2012