Airport staff were stunned when they opened three cargo boxes destined for restaurants and found a million pounds worth of endangered EELS.
The large cardboard boxes - weighing more than 700kg - were loaded into the hold on two commercial flights from Romania which arrived in Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday (19/12) and yesterday (20/12) morning.
Customs staff at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport opened the packages and found thousands of the small see-through 'glass eels' wriggling around. They said that the shipment of the European eel species Anguilla anguilla - banned from export by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) - was worth 40 million baht (970,000GBP).
Luckily, the creatures were saved before being served up as an expensive delicacy out in one of Thailand's many seafood restaurants.
