Common Eel — Part 2

Anguilla chrysypa Rafinesque

Images coming soon.

It is now comparatively easy to distinguish the sexes of the eel. In the first place the male is smaller than the female of the same age. The ovaries of the female are two yellowish or reddish-white elongate bodies, as broad as one's finger, lying alongside the backbone, arranged in numerous transverse folds, extending throughout the entire length of the abdominal cavity. These two bodies are so large as not to be easily overlooked, but they contain such a quantity of fatty cells, and the eggs imbedded in them are so small and delicate, that one might easily believe, even after a superficial microscopic examination, that the whole organ consists only of fat. The testes, or spermatic organs of the male, are not ribbon-shaped like the ovaries, but represent two longitudinal rows, each with about 50 lobules. These spermatic organs can be distinguished at once from the ovaries, not only by their lobular form, but also by their shining glassy appearance.

In 1877 Jacoby made careful investigations of a number of problems concerning the eel, and since then other investigators have worked upon the same problems, until now all essential or important facts in the life history of the eel are well understood. These may be briefly stated as follows:

The common eel spawns in salt water, usually off the mouths of rivers, on mudbanks, to which they go in great numbers at the spawning time, which is in the fall. On these mudbanks the eggs are laid, fertilization takes place, and the young eels develop within two or three months after hatching. At the beginning of the second spring these young find their way to mouths of the rivers, which they ascend in incredible numbers. In these freshwater streams and lakes they remain until of adult size, when they return to the sea for spawning purposes. This seaward migration takes places in the fall, at which time large numbers are caught in traps. During this migration, the eels, like the salmon and the shad, do not take any food. Having once reached the sea, they do not remain close to shore, but go out a distance to deeper water, where the development of the reproductive organs takes place very rapidly. This development is extraordinarily rapid when the immature state, in which the migrating eels are found, is considered; they probably become sexually mature within five or six weeks after reaching the sea. The spawning then takes place, after which both the old males and females die, never returning to fresh water the second time. The very unusual rapid development of their reproductive organs has such an effect upon the systems of the adult eels that they die soon after the act of reproduction. This is the reason that adult eels are never seen migrating up-stream.

The down-stream movement occurs usually at night, commencing soon after sunset, is strongest from midnight to 2 o'clock a.m., and ceases an hour or more before sunrise.

The common eel is remarkably prolific. The number of eggs produced by a single female 32 inches long has been estimated at 10,700,000. In the spring of the year thousands of young eels may be seen at the foot of waterfalls and dams, trying to make their way up stream. Professor Baird has estimated that in the spring and summer one might see hundreds of wagon loads of young eels at the foot of Niagara Falls, crawling over the slippery rocks and squirming in the seething whirlpools.

In their feeding habits eels are chiefly scavengers, feeding upon all manner of refuse, but preferring dead fish or other animal matter. They are a very undesirable inmate of rivers in which fish are caught in gillnets. It is said that the destruction of shad and herring by eels in the Susquehanna and other Atlantic coastal streams is enormous. It is not infrequent that when a gillnet is lifted the greater part of the catch consists simply of heads and backbones, the remainder having been devoured by myriads of eels in the short time the net was left out. The spawning shad is considered by them a special delicacy, and are often found emptied at the vent and completely gutted of the ovaries. Sometimes a shad, apparently full, is found to contain several eels of considerable size.

The commercial value of the common eel as a food-fish has long been well established. It justly holds a high rank as an article of food among all who are familiar with it, and in the markets it always brings a good price.

The eel is caught in all sorts of ways--in traps, eel-pots, seines, and on set-lines; and "bobbing for eels" is a classic in angling methods.