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June 2018
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“Nope. Eels”
“Whatcha doin’ that for?”
“To count ‘em”
He gave us a puzzled look and headed home. His interest was in the run
of herrings which he would use as bait for Striped Bass. The bass follow the
herring upriver.
Yes, we were there to count eels.
The American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) is a diadromous fish, capable of living
in both freshwater and seawater as are striped bass, shad and other herring
species. It’s the alewife that the fisherman was looking for as baitfish. The
difference between these fish and the eel is that they are anadromous,
living their adult lives in saltwater and returning to freshwater only to spawn,
though some say there is a resident population of stripers in the river. The
eel, on the other hand, lives its adult life in freshwater and returns to the sea
to spawn. The adult eels are called brown or yellow eels and when sexually
mature, the age is unclear but it could be eight to fifteen years, they become
silver eels with bulging eyes, darkened backs and a silver sheen to their bellies
and they head downstream.
James Prosek in his book “Eels…the world’s most mysterious fish” describes
a working eelman in the Delaware River where, under a new moon and after
a good rain in September, thousands of silver eels begin their migration back
to the sea and his year long work on his stone weir finally pays off on these two
nights. And where are the eels headed? The Sargasso Sea. This is an area in
the Atlantic Ocean between the Gulf Stream that includes the Bermuda Triangle.
Known as the graveyard of lost ships this becalmed sea is covered with a mass
of algae, plastic and other flotsam. It is here,
at depths of 1,300 to 2,300 feet that the
eels, both the American and the European
varieties, spawn. No one knows exactly
where this happens or what triggers it. This
has got to be some wild eel party!
The eel eggs hatch into little leaf-
like transparent water creatures called
leptocephali and after a year of drifting over
the continental shelf they metamorphose
into glass eels which then swim up the
rivers and tributaries. This was what we
were after!
We were working as citizen scientists
through the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation (DEC) and I
was a volunteer working for NATURE Lab,
a project of the Sanctuary for Independent
Media in Troy, NY. I had heard of the Eel
Project and thought it would be a great way
for the community to learn about the Hudson
River. There is no better classroom than the
great outdoors where learning to become
wet and dirty is an essential part of the
syllabus. I contacted their Citizen Science
group in the Hudson River Estuary Program
and, much to my surprise, they thought that
a week long trial run in the Poestenkill was
a good idea as their most northern sampling
station was in Ravena on the Hannacroix
Creek about a half hour South of Albany.
(They did a trial run in the Wynantskill near
Troy in 2017 with no success.) The Eel
Project began in 2008 with two sites and
now has 14 sites sampling the Hudson
River’s tributaries by over 750 volunteers
and students. Our team included students
from Dan Capuano’s Ecology class at
Hudson Valley Community College, and
students from RPI, Russell Sage and
Skidmore and the three girls from Brittonkill Elementary School that I enlisted by
promising them a life changing experience.
After five days of sampling we caught two pigmented elvers about five inches
long but no glass eels. It was still great fun, putting on waders or hip boots (Molly’s
leaked) and pulling up the net but we really needed to see this near mythical life
form that we were pursuing. So I headed down to Hannacroix Creek where, at low
tide, a half a dozen volunteers from the New Baltimore Conservancy converged.