Children at two Forest primary schools are hooked on the new rather slithery arrivals in their classrooms.

Severn & Wye Smokery boss Richard Cook took a tankful of elvers into his old school, Walmore Hill Primary, and its neighbour in Westbury-on-Severn - following a week which saw elvermen net 1,000 kilos of the 'glass eels' from the River Severn.

Just last year the BBC reported how with export outside Europe banned to protect stocks a kilo of elvers in China could cost up to £6,000 - more than Beluga caviar.

Mr Cook, whose business has just been shortlisted in the BBC Food and Farming Awards, told the pupils how to look after the 10cm long fish, which had just finished their two-year, 6,000km swim across the Atlantic without a bite to eat.

He went on to explain why it was so important to catch them to help them survive.

If left to swim up the Severn, he said, the tiny eels wouldn't survive because of the weirs at Maisemore and Tewkesbury which prevent them from reaching wetlands.

But by catching them, they can be grown in tanks and then released into the wild in local brooks and on Walmore Common.

He said it took 15 years for them to grow into adult eels and that is when they make their way back into the Severn and head for their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea.

Richard, whose Chaxhill business is a member of the Sustainable Eel Group involving scientists, government and commercial agencies and fishermen, is dedicated to eel conservation and he hopes his enthusiasm rubs off on the children, who were certainly fascinated by their new classmates.

At the end of June the children will help release the growing eels into local waterways - and they will get to sample a tasty piece of smoked eel!