Item 6 on the agenda is the 90-second statements and the first of these this week is from Dawn Bowden.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I rise to speak as the species champion for that most beautiful of creatures, the European eel. There is excellent work being undertaken by groups in my constituency, including Salmon and Trout Conservation Cymru and the South East Wales Rivers Trust, supported by members of Merthyr anglers and Natural Resources Wales, to try to restore our eel stocks.

In 2018 we released European eels into the Cyfarthfa lake in Merthyr Tydfil. Those particular eels were bred in tanks in Trelewis Primary School, and yesterday we did the same thing at the Taff Bargoed lake on the site of the former Trelewis drift mine. The conservation project also involves removing barriers, like weirs, from our rivers so that eels can migrate more easily. The European eel is a remarkable creature but, as some of you may have seen on the recent Countryfile programme, it faces a range of threats, including smuggling into Asia, where the eel is a particular delicacy. European eels start life as eggs in the Sargasso sea near Bermuda and spend 18 months floating on ocean currents towards the coasts of Europe and North Africa. They enter rivers and lakes and they spend anything from five to 20 years feeding and growing into adult eels. They then return to the sea and swim 3,000 miles for over a year back to spawn in the Sargasso sea.

As a species champion, I give my thanks to those local groups, volunteers, schools and education centres now helping in this important task of saving the European eel. In this Chamber, I know that there may be some differences of opinion over the EU, but I'm sure that we can all be united in our support for securing the future of the European eel.

Thank you. Vikki Howells.

On 23 June 1894, ten to four in the afternoon, two loud bangs were heard in Cilfynydd, the result of a devastating explosion at the Albion colliery. The colliery had given birth to the village. After the sinking of the first mine shaft, the population had increased from 500 within a decade and was around 3,500 by 1901. Yet, on this day, the colliery extracted a terrible toll from the local community. The instant response to the explosion was confusion. The night shift had just started. No-one knew how many men were down the pit. When bodies were brought up, they were, in many cases, so badly mutilated that is was impossible to determine identity.

Altogether, 290 men were killed in the Albion mining disaster, making it the second-worst mining disaster in Wales, and the fourth-worst in the UK. I say 'men', but many of the victims were in their teens. The youngest, John Scott, was aged just 13. The scale of the devastation is also highlighted by the fact that just two of the 125 horses that worked underground survived. The cause was determined to be the ignition of coal dust following an explosion of fire damp. The management exonerated in what many felt to be a whitewash. Albion colliery carried on working, claiming the lives of miners, but let us not forget this devastating disaster that occurred 125 years ago, which touched everyone living in Cilfynydd and changed lives forever.

Thank you.