#elvers

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I was reminded of this experience by @cantankerouscanuck so thank them for triggering this memory.  Today I’m going to tell you the story of how I was involved in an eel poaching ring sting operation.

Yeah, you heard me.

Right after I had gotten my masters, I was working as a fisheries tech for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS).  One of our surveys involved sampling baby eels, or glass eels, as they swam up our local rivers—this was done in order to determine how many babies were recruiting to the American eel population.

(me as a young, naive, fisheries technician) 

Eels are catadromous, which means they start their life out in salt water, and then move to freshwater for most of their life, then return to the sea to spawn. Eels start their life out in the Sargasso sea, in which they are thin, clear leptocephali.  Then they become thicker but still clear, as glass eels, and they swim inshore and up in freshwater streams and rivers.  There, they transform into fully pigmented elvers, which slowly grow into adult “yellow” eels.  Once they become reproductively viable, they are called “silver” eels, and it’s this point that they swim back out to the Sargasso sea to reproduce.  We have never seen them in the Sargasso sea, and have never seen two reproduce, but we know it happens, because baby glass eels come into coastal areas every year from March through June. This is when we would catch them at VIMS.

(Above: eel life cycle, Below left: glass eel, Below right: elver) 

So how do you catch an eel?  Well, you build an eel trap.  Basically what eels are looking for when they swim up river is flowing water and climbable walls, which is what we provide with the trap.  Basically, one section of the trap is a box, of which the inside is covered in a textured plastic material that is easy for them to climb.  Once they reach the top of the box, the flow of water running into the box pushes and sucks them into a long tube that runs down to a bucket.  The bucket has a few screened holes, which allow the water to pass through while maintaining some level of water in the bucket, but the eels cannot climb up the bucket and back through the tube.  Thus they are trapped until we come and check on them.

(A VIMS eel trap) 

These traps are usually placed at dams, culverts, or waterfalls, places where unnatural barriers would make it harder for eels to climb, and therefore, they would be more attracted to our traps. Eels can climb these barriers somewhat, unlike salmon and trout, but they are always looking for the path of least resistance. Because of this, all of our trap sites were at completely gorgeous spots in rural Virginia.

We would check on these sites every 2-3 days, count them, and take a small subset back to the lab for measurements and to observe pigmentation to determine which stage the glass eels were during the transition to elvers.

(Left: an eel pigmentation chart.  The darker they are, the closer they are to changing into an elver.  You can see the pigmentation differences between the lighter red circled eel, and the darker blue circled eel) 

Now, how did I get involved in a sting operation?  Well let me explain.  So eels are poached from the U.S. for the Asian market, both in adult and in glass eel form.  You can make $2,000 for a pound of glass eels on the black market.  It’s lucrative.  The reason why our eels are being targeted now is because Asian and European eels are both endangered, because they have also been fished to the brink of extinction. So now poachers are going after our eels, and there are a lot of Americans who will provide for that market.  

(a mass of glass eels--just to get an idea of how many of these guys you can catch in an average east coast creek) 

Fishing for glass eels is SUPER illegal in every east coast state except Maine. So, poachers build poaching rings in all other states.  They will build their own traps or steal from research study traps like ours, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service wanted to bring one big ring down.  So they contacted us, because we had poaches steal our catch or steal our traps in the past—and an agent came and began working with us.  He provided us camera traps for all of our eel trap sites, so we could detect where poachers were going, and our USF&W agent would go out in the dark of night and wait at these sights, pretending to be a poacher, until he gained their trust.  My boss would sometimes get calls at 3 in the morning from the agent asking him questions about eels, so he would know enough about the fish to pass as a poacher. Eventually, he followed the ring up to Maine, where he got the license plates and identities of all of the ring participants, including the leader.  And then the USF&W took their asses to court.  I think the ring leader is facing up to 10 years in jail. You can read an article about it here.

(OPERATION BROKEN GLASS BIIIIITTCCCHHH)

I never ran into any of the poachers, but there were definitely days when I saw that the trap had been messed with or our catch had been stolen.  I also answered some questions for our agent when he called during work hours, and to be honest, I’m glad I didn’t get the 3 am calls.  

All and all though, it was one of my favorite projects to work on, because it took me to some very unique and beautiful terrestrial sites that I never would have gotten to go to if I hadn’t worked on this project.  And, I got to interact with some natural “poachers” as well. Occasionally, we would find northern water snakes in our traps—it was always a bit of a challenge getting them out.  We would also occasionally find baby painted turtles trying to make their way into bigger ponds—and it was always fun releasing them up on the other side of the waterfall.  Unless it’s a sea turtle, it’s pretty rare that I get to interact with reptiles, so that was always an interesting surprise.  

(little baby turt and a northern water snake) 

"Dancing on Ice": Jenny Elvers gets hot shortly after the breakup

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"Hardly single and already on the smooch": Shortly after the breakup, Jenny Elvers gets hot on the ice

It crackles at the celebrity ice skating "Dancing on Ice": One participant wants to seduce in the thong, another presents her bust size so that she loses balance over it and Jenny Elvers smooching her ice dancing partner. She had just let know a few days ago that she…

Elvers, a luxury food in Spain

The elvers - young eels - are one of the most expensive foods in Spain, but when you see them for the first time you may wonder why. They are not, to put it mildly, something that shouts: eat me! When they are alive they are slug and transparent, and they slide and twist like little snakes. After cooking they become opaque and resemble dead, flaccid worms, except that they are white and their eyes are two small black dots. But many delicious things do not look especially attractive, what really matters is the taste. And this is where everything gets weird.