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.