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The tender sliver of smoked eel that Joseph Paquet offers visitors in his tiny fish shop on Quebec's Île d'Orléans is a rare local treat.

The filet is longer than Mr. Paquet's arm, flat and narrow, and stained a deep mahogany from the maple wood in his small smokehouse.

Balanced on a cracker, it makes a simple snack - flavoured with maple syrup and smoked, Mr. Paquet says, "like the old fashioned Indian used to do," for six hours over a smouldering maple fire.

The silver-haired Mr. Paquet has been fishing on the St. Lawrence River for more than 35 years.

He started catching the once-prolific eel when he was 16, helping a neighbour build the tall nets across the tidal current that lead these slithery fish into traps to be collected at low tide.

Over the years, Mr. Paquet has fished this stretch of the river with more than 20 other fishermen. But today, he is the last commercial eel fisherman in this part of the St. Lawrence because, like the fishermen, the fish are dwindling.

"There is about 10 times less eel as there were [30] years ago," Mr. Paquet says. "It is to say, for 1,000 pounds of eel you caught in 1978, you catch 100 pounds today."

It's good that Mr. Paquet serves his eel filleted, smoked and slivered, because the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) is not a pretty fish. With its slimy snake-like body, a metre long or more, and sharp teeth, it's not the kind of creature that evokes much public support for its population plight either.

But federal fisheries biologists are concerned about the crash in the eel population in recent years - last fall they released 50,000 young eels into the St. Lawrence around Ontario's Thousand Islands in an attempt to bolster their dwindling numbers in Lake Ontario.

The decline in the eel population - it was once the most abundant fish in the St. Lawrence - is blamed on the many hydroelectric dams that block their migration routes, contaminants such as DDT and PCBs, and the effect of global warming on the ocean currents that carry the eel larvae north from their spawning grounds in the Caribbean.

On tiny Île d'Orléans, farmers and fishers have been providing food to the region for nearly 400 years. The island, with its small village parishes, apple orchards, cheese dairies and stands of old sugar maples, remains a rural version of the historic capital city.

A faded sign proclaiming poissonnerie announces Mr. Paquet's retail shop along the single road that circles the island. While we speak halting French at best, with the help of his young grandson, we learn about the local fish we are sampling in a monosyllabic conversation, punctuated by charades.

But the food speaks volumes on its own. The sweet and smoky slice of translucent eel Mr. Paquet proffers is a culinary revelation, as is his ethereal sturgeon mousse, shot with ground nuts and creamy cheese. This is the only place you can still taste this unique delicacy. Unless we learn how to save the eel's habitat, it may be the last.