Eel (Animal)
Richard Schweid
Language: English
Pages: 109
ISBN: 2:00227128
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When pulled from the mud of creeks, ponds, rivers, or the sea, the eel, with its slick, snake-like body, emerges as an extremely mundane and even unappealing fish. But don't let the appearance fool you—the eel has been one of the world's favorite foods since ancient Greece, and the eel's life cycle is one of the most remarkable on the planet—during the middle ages, impoverished Londoners survived on eel and the eel later saved the Mayflower pilgrims from starvation on American shores.
In Eel, Richard Schweid chronicles the many facets of these slippery creatures from their natural history to their market value and contemporary consumption to their appearance in art and literature and finally to their present threatened status. So far, eels have steadfastly refused to reproduce in captivity, apparently requiring the vastness of the open ocean to successfully mature—which has imperiled the species' long-term survival. Schweid explains that freshwater eels are born in remote ocean depths and make a journey of thousands of miles to fresh water where they spend most of their lives before making a return journey to the ocean to mate and die.
Well-illustrated and containing many little-known facts about this surprising fish, Eel will appeal to general readers of natural history and others wishing to discover something more about the common unagi on the sushi menu.
are cause for deep concern. In 2004 the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), representing fifteen Atlantic coast states from Maine to Florida, asked the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to undertake a study and make a determination as to whether Anguilla rostrata deserved a place on the USFWS’s list of endangered species, and protection as such under the law. In 2005 the USFWS ruled that enough biological evidence existed to warrant a full-scale review of the
of American eels, the ASMFC estimated that in the North Atlantic states, Maine to Connecticut, the eel had lost access to 91 per cent of its habitat over the course of the twentieth century, with an 88 per cent loss in those rivers from New York to Virginia.24 Eel on a river bed, from Wood’s Illustrated Natural History. In addition to the dangers of going upstream, the dams also present a serious threat to a sexually mature female when she decides to begin her long downstream journey to
and on dark, cold and moonless nights in Toome, those nets come up out of the water brimming with silver eels. In the autumn of 1964 nearly 450,000 kg (1 million lb) were captured. Forty years later, in 2006, the catch was under 45,000 kg (100,000 lb) and falling.32 A fisherman with eels in a net, Comacchio. An eel trap, or ahinaki, made from vine, mid-19th century, New Zealand. Draw a ragged diagonal line right across Europe, north to south, and things are no better in Lake Comacchio
Charente, France. Eels are subject to the depredations of various parasites and diseases and these may be contributing to recent declines. For instance, the European eel is known to have gone through periods of high mortality caused by the nematode Anguillicola crassus, which affects the swim bladder. Possibly the eel population is under attack by a disease we have not identified. Or perhaps the decline is part of a cycle we have yet to perceive and one day soon, for no apparent reason, the
prepare. Many of them were from the Fens region of eastern England, where eels were common fare. A swarm of eels in a holding tank. An ancient diet of eels was a taste the European settlers shared with the Native Americans. Archaeologists have excavated a site on Kejimkujik Lake in Nova Scotia, where they believe prehistoric people lived during the eel season, where the remains of eels were reported to be about 5,000 years old.2 The mighty St Lawrence river delivered large numbers of eels to