American Eel

Rockfish and herring are examples of anadromous fish - fish that live in the oceans, but must return to fresh water to spawn.  Eels are an example of just the opposite.  They are a catadromous species which spawn in the oceans and live most of their life in fresh water.  The elvers pictured in this photograph were not born there but have actually travelled thousands of miles to reach this stream! 

In one of the amazing stories of the natural world, adult eels from all over the east coast of North America migrate to the Sargasso Sea, an area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean east of the Bahamas and north of the West Indies where they spawn and then die.  Newly hatched eels start out as something called a leptocephali.  Carried by ocean currents, they drift toward the coast for about a year as they slowly transform into elvers.  They enter the estuaries along the coast where they mature and live for as many as twenty years before adults make the migration back to the Sargasso Sea.

My brother was fishing in the Patuxent last summer when he hooked a two foot adult eel.  I would have cut the line and my losses, but he had never hooked one before and didn't know how slimy they are.  He got some of the slime on his shoe which was still there months later despite several attempts to clean it off.  Next time, I'm pretty sure he will just cut his line.

While American eels have long been used as bait, they are edible and are considered a gourmet item in Europe where they are shipped by some commercial fisherman in the Chesapeake.  Their numbers have been in slow decline and catching them at maturity when they close to reproducing may be part of the reason.