EELS PREY ON TROUT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19585, 17 March 1938, Page 4

EELS PREY ON TROUT

“A SLOW-GROWING BEAST’' 121 N. LONG IN EIGHT YEARS One of the most serious threats to the existence of young trout fry is the eel. Several items of interest concerning its life were given last evening to the meeting of the East Coast Acclimatisation Society by Mr. D. F. Hobbs, the Government biologist to the Freshwater Research Fisheries Department. Mr. Hobbs advised that the depredations made by eels should be investigated thoroughly. In the stomachs of small eels would be found small fry or trout and the larger the eels were the larger the trout eaten by them. Eels and trout fed on much the same food. Apart from competing for food, the eels were also preying on the trout. Eels were only available to trout as food on rare occasions and an eel was seldom found in the stomach of a trout. The larger and more financial societies were assisting the research in their investigations and a large-scale experiment was being carried out in Southland. Endeavours to eliminate the eels from the rivers there were being carried out by the use of hinakis.

Mr. Hobbs said that eels were slowgrowing beasts, being about two years’ old when they came into the rivers from the sea. At the age of eight years they were only 12in. long so an indication of the age of some of the very big eels could be arrived at. On account of that fact and the understanding that they usually frequented the same old feeding grounds it was thought that if the eels were completely cleared from a river it would retard their progress to such an extent that it might be another 15 years before they were established again in that river. In reply to a question, Mr. Hobbs said that as long as it was not a cataract, eels could go up falls in a river, the same as trout. He had seen them climb up a vertical wet wall that was covered with moss. Eels exuded a slimy substance only when afraid.