In 2014, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature classified the American eel as endangered, but the listing is not legally binding. There is rising concern that the harvest - some of it legal, some illegal - is contributing to a widespread species decline that may have amounted to 50 percent over the last several decades. The United States still allows baby American eels to be trapped and sent to Asia, but only from a handful of states. Pushed to the brink of extinction, the species was banned as an export in 2010. The European eel, too, has been hit hard by harvesters who catch them young and import them to China or South Korea to be farmed to adulthood and then shipped to Japan. The 2011 tsunami delivered a further blow by wiping out whole stocks of the animal. The Japanese eel has been decimated by this huge demand. Overfishing to supply eels to Japan, where they’re grilled as a delicacy, has played a major role in losses. Climate change is bringing a new threat as melting glacial ice slows the ocean currents that eels depend on for travel. Habitat loss, pollution, disease and barriers to migration, such as dams, have pushed populations of many of them into serious decline. They include the Japanese eel, which lives along the shores of the northwest Pacific Ocean, and the European eel, which inhabits the waterways that connect to the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The American eel is one of 16 species of of eels worldwide that live in freshwater and migrate to saltwater to reproduce. So much time and effort is being invested because the eel is a foundational part of the ecosystem, serving as prey throughout its life cycle for all sorts of other animals higher up the food chain. Fish and Wildlife Service to collect data about the eels’ population. Similar research is underway all along the East Coast as part of an effort coordinated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the U.S. The environmental agency has been catching the animals at a monitoring station here, where Carr’s Pond empties into the Pettaquamscutt River, since 2000 and another on the nearby Annaquatucket River since 2004 to gain a better understanding of how many of them are finding a home in Rhode Island.Įvery day during a 12-week period between April and July, when baby eels are arriving in the state’s rivers from their ocean spawning grounds, scientists from the agency’s fisheries division come out to check the traps, counting and measuring the animals that have been collected over the previous 24 hours and then releasing them into the pond. Which helps explain why McGee and Phillip Edwards, a supervising biologist with the DEM, are wrangling eels on this recent morning. “There are definitely big question marks,” he says. McGee can rattle off fascinating facts about eels, and yet he’s the first to admit that there’s still so much to be discovered about their complex life cycles and their epic migrations, which can last years and cover thousands of miles. One that’s exceptionally nimble escapes, dropping onto the grassy ground and squirming away before being scooped back up again, no worse for wear. The animals wriggle and writhe and, with inexplicable success, maneuver their dexterous bodies up the tank’s smooth glass sides toward its lip and freedom beyond. Pat McGee empties a bucket over a fish tank, spilling out about 100 tiny eels that he’s trapped in North Kingstown. Scientists know a lot about the American eel, but they have no definitive answer to perhaps the biggest question facing the species: Is its population in trouble?
#WOLF EEL FISHERMAN SKIN#
It undergoes a late-life metamorphosis from river forager to ocean traveler, its skin color changing from yellow to silver for better camouflage, its eyes shifting forward and enlarging, its swim bladder engorging.Īnd every eel that’s ready to spawn - from as far north as Greenland, as far south as Venezuela and as far inland as the Great Lakes - meets up around the same time every year in the same place near Bermuda called the Sargasso Sea. It reproduces only once in a lifetime of 30 years or more, doing so and then promptly dying. It is the only fish in North America that spends its life in freshwater but migrates to the open ocean to procreate. NORTH KINGSTOWN - The American eel, found in more freshwater bodies in Rhode Island than any other fish, is a slimy and serpentine creature that emerges from underwater lairs to feed at night.
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