THE SLIPPERY EEL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 6 October 1942, Page 1

THE SLIPPERY EEL

AN INTERESTING LIFE STORY ’ In the middle of the Atlantic, near the Bermudas, half a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, is to be ! found the birthplace of eels. Eels from all over the British Isles, from France, America, and other places, arrive at the breeding-grounds, and, in spite of the fact that many mil--1 lions of them take part in this annual meeting, the fish strictly pre--1 serve their nationality- Thus the eggs laid by an American eel may be deposited among a large number of "Europeans,” but when the elvers, or young eels are old enough they i will infallibly leave for the lakes and i rivers of America, the European fish 1 going their own way. .For the first few weeks of their lives the fish frai ternise freely, but, when the time arrives, each elver swims in the direction whence his parents came, towards his new homeIn spite of the fact that scientists have found out so much about the life story of the eel, there remain many mysteries for solution. No human being has ever seen an eel’s egg, and nobody has ever found what happens to the mature eels when the breeding season is over. The parent fish, having assembled at the breed-ing-ground, lay their eggs, and are never seen again. The elvers are born quite flat, and assume their snake-like appearance only when their sea journey is nearly accomplished. They travel in enormous shoals; in some rivers they ascend in such numbers as to cause a sort of miniature tidal wave. Having arrived at the river in which the parents lived, the journey is over; but in numberless cases the objective is an inland pond or stream. An extraordinary fact dis-

covered by the men of science is that the elvers in those cases travel overland. This is made possible by the fact that water is contained in the head of the young eel, and that it is forced into the gills, enabling the fish to “breathe” almost as well on dry land as in water. Through marshy ground, long wet grass, and even over many roads when they are sufficiently wet, the elvers wend their way, until at last they arrive at the inland pond, their final goal, after, in some cases, more than two years of travel! For the river eel life is not such an arduous affair as it is for the fish of the inland pond. The eel which travels overland generally does so by a series of forced night marches- On the journey many obstacles, such as railway embankments and viaducts, are encountered—and overcome. Eels have even been found in Switzerland in lakes 3,000 feet above sealev.el—and they were born in midAtlantic! The return to the birthplace is no less remarkable. After a life of ease in pond or river, the full-grown eel feels the urge to return. Wherever they are when the time comes, nothing will stop them returning except violent death. Eels bought at the fishmonger’s shop have been kept in buckets so that they would remain fresh until killed, but in the night they have been known to wriggle out of the bucket, down a drainpipe, along a sewer, into the river, and so to the sea.