An agreement has been reached at an international conference on managing Japanese eel resources to more effectively clarify the distribution routes of young eels.

Delegates from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan ended the two-day meeting in Tokyo on Friday. They hope to save the Japanese eel from extinction.

Japan's fisheries agency says the amount of young eels caught in the country during the 4-month period through February this year was a record low 0.8 tons.

International officials have struggled to come up with effective measures to conserve stocks due to a lack of transparency regarding where young eels are caught and cultivated.

An agreement was reached at a previous conference to cut the total amount of eels delivered to fish farms by 20 percent from 2014.

Japan was hoping for a deeper cut at the latest conference, but officials refrained from tightening regulations as the biggest harvester, China, was absent for the fifth straight year.

Source: ANNnewsCH