A great fish that most people don't know much about. The American eel, Anguilla rostrata, is a member of the Familiy Anguillidae, along with the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) and a dozen or so other species and subspecies. All are catadramous, meaning that they are born at sea, make their way into freshwater rivers and lakes where they live their lives prior to returning to the sea to spawn and die. The opposite pattern from the more well-known anadramous pattern shown by Pacific salmon. The American eel is found in lakes and rivers along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where the females can reach lengths of 4-5 feet. The males, which often remain in the lower reaches of rivers, are smaller, usually not much over 2 feet in length.A Chesapeake Bay eel....
They're easy to recognize, of course, with their snake-like body with a single continuous median fin, and no pelvic fins. They're predators, feeding on a range of prey from inverts to small fish. They're largely nocturnal in their feeding - back in the days of my youth they were a common catch on trotlines.
The most dramatic thing about American eels is their spawning migration. When they reach maturity, at about 5 years of age, they begin a downstream migration. They make their
way into the ocean and migrate to the region of the Sargasso Sea, west of the Bahamas. There, at great depth, they spawn and die. The millions of eggs produced by the female, when fertilized, develop into a strange, leaf-like larva known as the leptocephalus. These larval stages, assisted by ocean currents begin the long trek back towards the continent. As they travel, they gradually metamorphose into progressively more "eel-like" forms. By the time they reach river mouths, they are small, pigmented forms known as elvers, which migrate upriver to their adult homes.
Interestingly, European eels also spawn in the Sargasso Sea region of the Atlantic. Anguilla anguilla is virtually indistinguishable from the American eel, differing in vertebral number (A. anguilla has more) and in the number of chromosomes. However, their development is staggered in timing for the much longer transit that they have to make in returning to their native rivers in Northern Europe. Where the voyage of the larval American eel requires about a year, that of the developing European eels may take as much as three years.
I don't think there's much of a market for American eels in this country. I do have a memory of reading, as a kid, a biography of Babe Ruth. One of those little blue biographies that my elementary school library was full of. I have vivid memories of the stories of his mom Kate pickling eels in the Baltimore home of his childhood. Now, it's the Asian and European markets that are driving eel consumption. And there's plenty of it - this year Greenpeace International added the eel to their Seafood Red List.
The most dramatic thing about American eels is their spawning migration. When they reach maturity, at about 5 years of age, they begin a downstream migration. They make their
way into the ocean and migrate to the region of the Sargasso Sea, west of the Bahamas. There, at great depth, they spawn and die. The millions of eggs produced by the female, when fertilized, develop into a strange, leaf-like larva known as the leptocephalus. These larval stages, assisted by ocean currents begin the long trek back towards the continent. As they travel, they gradually metamorphose into progressively more "eel-like" forms. By the time they reach river mouths, they are small, pigmented forms known as elvers, which migrate upriver to their adult homes.Interestingly, European eels also spawn in the Sargasso Sea region of the Atlantic. Anguilla anguilla is virtually indistinguishable from the American eel, differing in vertebral number (A. anguilla has more) and in the number of chromosomes. However, their development is staggered in timing for the much longer transit that they have to make in returning to their native rivers in Northern Europe. Where the voyage of the larval American eel requires about a year, that of the developing European eels may take as much as three years.
I don't think there's much of a market for American eels in this country. I do have a memory of reading, as a kid, a biography of Babe Ruth. One of those little blue biographies that my elementary school library was full of. I have vivid memories of the stories of his mom Kate pickling eels in the Baltimore home of his childhood. Now, it's the Asian and European markets that are driving eel consumption. And there's plenty of it - this year Greenpeace International added the eel to their Seafood Red List.
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