The American eel is one of 16 species of of eels worldwide that live in freshwater and migrate to saltwater to reproduce. So much time and effort is being invested because the eel is a foundational part of the ecosystem, serving as prey throughout its life cycle for all sorts of other animals higher up the food chain. Fish and Wildlife Service to collect data about the eels’ population. Similar research is underway all along the East Coast as part of an effort coordinated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the U.S. The environmental agency has been catching the animals at a monitoring station here, where Carr’s Pond empties into the Pettaquamscutt River, since 2000 and another on the nearby Annaquatucket River since 2004 to gain a better understanding of how many of them are finding a home in Rhode Island.Įvery day during a 12-week period between April and July, when baby eels are arriving in the state’s rivers from their ocean spawning grounds, scientists from the agency’s fisheries division come out to check the traps, counting and measuring the animals that have been collected over the previous 24 hours and then releasing them into the pond. Which helps explain why McGee and Phillip Edwards, a supervising biologist with the DEM, are wrangling eels on this recent morning. “There are definitely big question marks,” he says. McGee can rattle off fascinating facts about eels, and yet he’s the first to admit that there’s still so much to be discovered about their complex life cycles and their epic migrations, which can last years and cover thousands of miles. One that’s exceptionally nimble escapes, dropping onto the grassy ground and squirming away before being scooped back up again, no worse for wear. The animals wriggle and writhe and, with inexplicable success, maneuver their dexterous bodies up the tank’s smooth glass sides toward its lip and freedom beyond. Pat McGee empties a bucket over a fish tank, spilling out about 100 tiny eels that he’s trapped in North Kingstown. Scientists know a lot about the American eel, but they have no definitive answer to perhaps the biggest question facing the species: Is its population in trouble? It undergoes a late-life metamorphosis from river forager to ocean traveler, its skin color changing from yellow to silver for better camouflage, its eyes shifting forward and enlarging, its swim bladder engorging.Īnd every eel that’s ready to spawn - from as far north as Greenland, as far south as Venezuela and as far inland as the Great Lakes - meets up around the same time every year in the same place near Bermuda called the Sargasso Sea. It reproduces only once in a lifetime of 30 years or more, doing so and then promptly dying. It is the only fish in North America that spends its life in freshwater but migrates to the open ocean to procreate. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs and the second part identifies the species within the genus.NORTH KINGSTOWN - The American eel, found in more freshwater bodies in Rhode Island than any other fish, is a slimy and serpentine creature that emerges from underwater lairs to feed at night. The species name consists of two words and is based on Latin. The traditional term pisces (also ichthyes) is considered a typological, but not a phylogenetic classification.Īll animals and plants are given a species name based on a technical term in biological taxnomy. Because in this manner the term “fish” is defined negatively as a paraphyletic group, it is not considered a formal taxonomic grouping in systematic biology. However, traditionally fish are rendered paraphyletic by excluding the tetrapods (i.e., the amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals which all descended from within the same ancestry). Tetrapods emerged within lobe-finned fishes, so cladistically they are fish as well. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups. They form a sister group to the tunicates, together forming the olfactores. A fish is any member of a group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits.
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