ELLSWORTH, Maine — Maine’s Department of Marine Resources has released updated 2012 landings figures that confirm what many people already knew, if only unofficially: the value of the state’s elver fishery shot up significantly last year.

The official preliminary tally of last year’s elver season, which ran from late March through the end of May, indicates that elver fishermen earned a cumulative total of nearly $38 million in 2012, which is approximately five times the cumulative total of $7.6 million that they got for their catch the year before.

Compared to 2010, it’s even more staggering. That year, the fishery generated only $584,000 in revenue for licensed fishermen — one sixty-fifth of its value in 2012.

The elver fishery now ranks behind only lobster in Maine for overall fishery value.

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