American Eel: Ambassadors of the River part 1

In this week's episode of Rarefied, host Meredith Meeker delves into the fascinating world of the American Eel. Despite its slimy and elusive nature, the American Eel is a remarkable and critical species. Meredith is joined by Chris Bowser, Education Coordinator for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, who shares his extensive knowledge on these unique creatures. Listeners will learn about the eel's life cycle, unique adaptations, and the significant threats they face, including habitat disruption and climate change. The episode also touches on the cultural and nutritional importance of eels, and how ongoing conservation efforts aim to safeguard their future. This is the first part of a two-part series, with more intriguing details and actionable ways to help eels to be discussed in the next episode.

https://academic.oup.com/fisheries/advance-article/doi/10.1093/fshmag/vuae029/8108272

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-dynamics/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2023.1270644/full

00:00 Introduction to Rarefied Podcast

00:33 Meet the American Eel

02:18 Guest Introduction: Chris Bowser

03:07 Understanding the American Eel

09:25 Life Cycle of the American Eel

17:03 Eels in Freshwater Habitats

18:21 Challenges and Conservation

22:27 Finding Eels: Techniques and Tools

24:42 Volunteer Efforts and Data Collection

26:05 Yearly Data and Restoration Projects

30:01 The Threats Facing Eels

31:38 The Importance of Stream Connectivity

40:15 Eel Fisheries and Consumption

47:17 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

Meredith 0:23

Welcome you found us. Let the adventure begin. This is rarefied the podcast where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. I'm your host, Meredith Meer, and on this week's episode, we are learning about a creature that might make you go ew right now. But by the end of the episode, I know you'll be saying, Ooh, they are a magical and mucusy creature, and I think you're going to fall in love with them, or at least fall into fascination. So say hello to the American Eel. I have spent a lot of time along rivers and I have never seen an American eel. I've seen some more eels in the ocean, but never once close to home, and through this episode I've come to learn our freshwater eels are a totally different group from their ocean dwelling cousins. The closest I have come to an Angulate Eel, which our guest will so helpfully describe for you has definitely been on my plate at a sushi restaurant, something I will certainly be reconsidering after this episode. I'm recording this episode from Ontario where the American eel is considered endangered or critically imperiled. Thankfully, it's doing better in other places and is considered apparently secure globally and in the United States this amazing creature has a wide range stretching the entire eastern coast of North America. And is found everywhere east of the Mississippi, it can be found in some of the largest waterways to the tiniest streams since it is such an adaptable species. We'll get into why it's threatened and its amazing lifecycle, but if you wanna hear about all the ways you can help. Eels and what our guest thinks eels would say if they ever gave a TED Talk. You're gonna have to wait until part two drops next week. That's right. This is our first two part episode. I just couldn't get enough of our guest. So let me introduce you to Chris Bowser. Chris is the education coordinator for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation with the Hudson River Estuary Program and the Hudson River Research Reserve in partnership with the Water Resource Institute of Cornell University. He also teaches environmental science at Marris College, and previously worked for the United States Peace Corps and the Hudson River Slough Clearwater. His love of eels will definitely come through your headphones, and it's obvious why he has inspired so many community scientists to become conservationists. He might just inspire you two.

Bowser 3:00

Absolutely. My name is Chris Bowser and I use he, him pronouns.

Meredith 3:06

Thank you. And so American eel, I feel like some people might be familiar with it. Others less so maybe they're thinking more ocean animals. Can you give us a quick description of like, what is an American eel?

Bowser 3:21

Sure, so an American eel is part of a group of eels of animals that are found all over the world that are sometimes called anguillid eels. So when we use the word eel today, we're really going to be talking about this little scientific group of about, depending on who you talk to, 16 to 19 species of anguillid eels. These aren't. the moray eels that you might see in the ocean. These aren't electric eels that you might see South America or hear about, you know, electric charges. This is a group of animals migrate between saltwater freshwater. So that's what makes the American Eel, the European Eel, the Japanese Eel, all of this, this basket of Angolid species, that's what makes them special. To the best of our knowledge, they all hatch in their respective salt waters, whether that's the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, or the Pacific Ocean. And then they all migrate to shore and some of them might stay close to shore, might stay in coastal estuaries and shorelines, but many of them will migrate all the way up into freshwater streams and rivers and way up into watersheds. And they might live in these watersheds or these coastal areas for many years, sometimes decades, before, if they survive at some point in their life, They return back to their respective ocean to spawn, we presume once and die. All, that's, that is a life cycle that all of these Anguillid eels have in common. And that makes them very, very unique, even amongst the migratory fish world. fish do the opposite. Everybody knows about salmon. Many people know about things like sturgeon and striped bass. Things that lay their eggs and spawn and reproduce in fresh water and then go out to the ocean to get bigger and then come back, you know, multiple times sometimes to spawn. are the opposite of that and that is one of the weirdest things about them. Not many animals. do that. That's called atadromy is, is, is what eels do. And it's, so, and it's as opposed to unadromy, which is what sturgeon and the salmon and the shad all do.

Meredith 5:48

Cool. So unique species. They must have some incredible adaptations to be able to do fresh water and salt water.

Bowser 5:58

You know, I mean, you got to think about it at the, so when they're, when they're making this transition, right? From saltwater to either coastal species or brackish water or freshwater species. Remember, that's like, those are like changes at like the cellular level, right? You've got to, you've got to have different mechanisms. to live in salt water than you do in fresh water to deal with like the pressures and the solutes and all the osmosis and everything going on. So even at the cellular level, eels have some incredible things going on. And then just their list of adaptations, you know, in order to survive. One of the things that, that I'll often do with when we're introducing eels to people, is have somebody touch an eel. And, and feel the fact that eels are sliming. At first, it's like, whoa, that's really gross. But actually, slime is a fantastic, fantastic adaptation. First of all, it works great to be elusive from predators. It's very hard to catch an eel, right? It is literally slippery as an eel. It's literally, like, how we define slippery. And there, that slime is also a tremendous protective coat against bacterial infection. You know, it's related to the reason why we get a runny nose when we get sick. It's almost an immune response to keep away microbes and pathogens. So, that slime of eels is not something to be, like, grossed out by. It's something to marvel at. Oh, eels are slimy. How delightful.

Meredith 7:30

So we're talking about like pretty much the Angleids. Is there things that make the American eel different from the rest or is it where it lives?

Bowser 7:43

So that's a great question. So many of the angle is. have very similar lifestyles. There, there are going to be some difference of habitats. There are going to be some differences of appearances, but geography is a big one, particularly like, so both the American eel and the European eel thought by many people, not all, to have the same general area of where they reproduce, which, frankly, is still not very well nailed down. We use this term, the Sargasso Sea, but as colleagues of mine point out, that's a really broad term. Like, to say Sargasso Sea is to basically say a

Meredith 8:24

So I'm going to stop the recording and I'm going to play the music. So

Bowser 8:31

in similar places. The little babies of each are found relatively close to each other. But the American eels are slightly smaller than the European eels. They actually have a few less vertebrae the European eels. So there is a physical difference between the two. And I've, I've, I mean, I've held the little baby glass eels are about. Two and a half inches long and you, you can hold an American glass eel in your hand and glass eel is not a special species. It's just like the, the age of a, of a, of a young American eel. And then I've been and, and many times I've, I've, I've, I've. I've been lucky enough to be in Europe and hold a European glass seal in my hand, and I, I, you can tell, oh yeah, it's just a little bit bigger than its American counterpart. But you can totally see how they're very closely related, just a tiny little bit different.

Meredith 9:24

Okay. Now you've brought up the life stages, so I feel like we need to go into like what the life cycle of, because I think that blows people's minds. A little bit.

Bowser 9:37

I, I completely agree. Look, I even have, I, I realize this is a podcast, but I actually have with me a poster that we had produced that literally tracks through the life cycle, so. Eels start life as an egg. They hatch out, and their first sort of life stage that we recognize is what's called the leptocephali. So this is like a little larval eel. This is, this is, they look like a transparent willow leaf. Or actually, a friend of mine says they kind of look like a toenail clipping. All right, in terms of size and shape. And they're very little, but they have big teeth and they, they can swim, but you got to remember like the currents of the Atlantic Ocean are pretty strong. So yeah, they can swim, but they're also being pushed around by current. So they have both of these things going on and they're trying to eat marine snow and little plankton, little bits of drifting organic material that they find in the ocean. And they're trying to eat and eat and eat and bulk up and bulk up. And by the time they get towards a coast, so let's, let's stick with the American eel. That leptocephali

Meredith 10:38

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Bowser 10:47

Two and a half inch piece of transparent linguine. They're called glass because they really are transparent, especially when they're super young. You can see right through their bodies. You can see a little heart beating. You can see their gills fluttering. You can see the, the little morse code line of a spine. And this is the age where they're starting that transition. From saltwater to either brackish water or even freshwater creature. And this is the age of eel that's coming up streams, frankly, right now. So I'm, I'm sitting on the banks. I'm literally looking at the Hudson River. we are just at the front edge of the first glass eels coming up the Hudson River. My colleagues checked one of our nets yesterday and there were two glass eels in that net. we're right here where they're coming in now It's great to be transparent when you're out in the ocean because you look like water There's not that many places to hide in the ocean. But once you come into shallow water It makes much more sense to sort of blend in with the bottom And also if you're in shallow water, you might get exposed to sunlight You need some pigment to help protect your inner organs. So these glass eels develop pigment They become a brownish color, and at that point we call them Elvers. So the term Elver a young eel that's got more pigment on it. So glass eels and Elvers, they kind of, they overlap a lot. All of these life stages overlap a lot. There's no like, ta da moment where one becomes another. In fact, that little Elver

Meredith 12:22

Okay.

Bowser 12:42

So a yellow eel is like anything, any eel that's over, let's say a foot long is where it's going to be a yellow eel. It doesn't mean it's yellow. It could be green, brown, could be yellow. And that, that life stage is Going to stick around for a long time. Wherever it is, if it's down in the coast, like in New York Harbor, it's probably going to stay in the harbor. If it's up here in the Hudson River and it finds a tributary or a pond, it might stick in that area. At least for a few years before it moves on. But it will stay a yellow eel for years. In the case of a big female, potentially decades. And then finally, and by the way, it has not become sexually mature. We can't, like, by the technical definitions of adult, the yellow eel is not yet an adult. It's this weird, sub adult, endless teenager

Meredith 13:32

you have any questions about it, please feel free to call me and I'll be happy to answer them. so much. so much.

Bowser 13:52

It does go through a color change because very dark on the top because very light on the bottom Becomes and that's a popular color scheme among

Meredith 14:01

Silence. Silence.

Bowser 14:16

and they start their migration to the ocean, whether that's to the Sargasso Sea or somewhere else, wherever they're going to spawn, that's when they're leaving their streams,

Meredith 14:28

for joining us and we'll be getting started in just a few minutes.

Bowser 14:50

either the energy to move the energy to grow her eggs. So that when she finally, when she finally expires, she has literally given everything to the cause of eel reproduction. It's pretty darn heroic if you ask me. Being an eel is like being a hero.

Meredith 15:11

Oh, my God.

Bowser 15:12

Anyway, there's the life stages

Meredith 15:13

Yeah, I love it. I can see why people find these creatures so fascinating. Correct me if I'm wrong. We don't have a really good idea of actually what eel reproduction looks like though.

Bowser 15:29

We really don't. We really don't. We have, you know, we have, we, we, scientists have found gravid or, or, or think of it like eels with eggs or milt sperm in them. But we've, we've never actually observed this happening in the wild. We don't know if it's, if it's a massive congregation. If it's sort of broadcast in the water, hope for the best. If there's, if there's a lot of contact, we really don't know what that looks like. We kind of know, hey, these big, these big silver eels that are developing gonads, they're leaving our streams and they're heading out to sea. And we know that. Hey, at some point, these little baby eels are drifting on currents and swimming the best they can back towards shore. And what happens in the middle still remains a big mystery.

Meredith 16:15

I love that there's still so much miss, I mean, as a scientist, I shouldn't love how much mystery there is, but I think it's so,

Bowser 16:22

should love how much the mystery is. That's, that's the whole beauty of science is that we love the mysteries, right? The mysteries are great. I, I love that it's mysterious. I love that we don't know. In fact, I'm not even sure I need to know. I'm not even sure I want to know. Oh my gosh, I can't believe, that's what I can't believe I'm saying is that when I'm like, You can keep it mysterious. I'm all right with that.

Meredith 16:43

yeah, I mean, this seems like a mysterious, magical kind of animal. It seems like he suffers a little bit from Peter Pan syndrome. It doesn't want to grow up,

Bowser 16:52

Yeah, I guess so. I hadn't thought of that. You're right.

Meredith 16:55

but really, really fascinating. And so let's focus a little bit on the life stages while they're here. So they're in our freshwater rivers for the most part, you're in New York, I'm in Canada, that's where they are. What kind of rivers are they in? Are they staying in these big ones like the St. Lawrence and the Hudson? Or are they in the tiny streams too?

Bowser 17:19

You know, this is a great thing about eels. It's all of the above. Meredith. It's all of the above. And this is, this is wonderful. One of the beautiful things about eels is they're incredibly ubiquitous. They're incredibly accessible. They are everywhere. They, you could have a highly urbanized city Creek running through downtown, pick a city you, you, Are probably going to have eels in there. You could have a beautiful rural mountain stream a pond with a little creek that trickles out of it, and you're probably going to have eels in it. They get everywhere. Those glass eels come and they climb and they journey and they find those habitats. So in terms of where you find them. you take the Mississippi River and you look at the, you know, the, the continent of North America, east of that, that is all potential eel habitat, Mississippi drainage included. Now, there's a lot of, now that's, that, and I should say And one of them I'll mention now is we've manipulated so many streams, because we've channelized streams, which makes them faster and gives them more energy sometimes, because we put dams on streams, and, and eels can even sometimes get over a dam, but every time you put a dam, that's gonna limit how many eels get over that dam. Because we've put culverts in, basically road crossings that maybe aren't sized very well or perched up high. We've, we've, we've broken the connectivity of a lot of our waterways. And in breaking that connectivity, we've made it harder for eels to access those streams. And we've also disrupted processes of streams. So one of the things I love about eels is that they're kind of this ambassador. To talking about stream health in a way we don't always think about it. We don't always think about how a stream needs to be connected to itself. Not just for eels, but for everything. It's just that eels are like the direct ambassador for it. They're like, hey, humans, connect these streams together. You know, this is, people are, people, animals are using this. Water is using this. Nutrient sediments, inorganic and organic materials are using this stream. are bearing that message to us. We need connected waterways.

Meredith 19:41

We are going to get into threads and I feel like I want to jump into that, but before we do,

Bowser 19:46

Oh, sure.

Meredith 19:47

because they're so ubiquitous, why haven't more people seen them or come in contact with them? Is it because they're so good at camouflage? Is it because of their behavior? Like, why aren't people more familiar with eels? I've never seen one and I've spent a lot of time in rivers and around water.

Bowser 20:06

Meredith, it's such a great question, and it is literally the bread and butter of my job. You know, and I, and I, and I should, I should, I should mention that. So I, I work for a bunch of different organizations. I work for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Specifically the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve. the Hudson River Estuary Program and the Cornell University Water Resource Institute. And I really consider myself both a fish biologist, but also an environmental educator. And the fish biologist in me loves eels because they're a fascinating animal. They're something, because they're ubiquitous, we can find them in many places. We can, we can make inferences from the numbers and the timings and the presence or absence of eels. But the educator in me loves the fact that many people just like you have never seen an eel, even though are probably living, hopefully thriving, who's to say, in a stream near you. So even here in the Hudson River, when we do our Hudson River Eel Project, which is a community science endeavor. where we train hundreds, maybe even a thousand volunteers a year to help us catch, count, and release these glass eels as they're migrating from ocean to estuary to river. Many of those volunteers live within a block or two of a waterway and have never seen an eel. And then all of a sudden they realize, oh my gosh, there are hundreds or thousands of eels living in this stream. Partly because they're masters of disguise. They don't want to be seen. They don't want to, they don't want to deal with predators. An eel is very, very happy being wedged in some rocks, coming out at night, hunting some food, being brown, being on the bottom, blending in, and then scurrying right back to those logs or those rocks or that underwater crevice. And hanging out until it's time to go out and eat again. So, eels are very, very good at not being noticed. They are not a flamboyant fish species by any means. They just want to, like, get by, be unseen, and basically live that they can get to. If they can swim there, they're there.

Meredith 22:27

Okay, because they're so sneaky and you're training volunteers to find them, how do you actually find an eel?

Bowser 22:34

Well, so, we have a couple things that help us out tremendously, and the big thing for the, for our, for our baby eel, our glass eel sampling, is we use special nets. nets are called FIKE nets, and they look kind of like a big ice cream cone on its side. So it's got, it's kind of a funnel, right? And it's a funnel made of a very fine mesh because we don't want the eels to get stuck in the mesh. We want water to get in, but we, we, you know, we're really, we're really talking about eels that are really small. So we're looking at like millimeters or less of space. And we put these nets into tidal creeks. basically where a small stream

Meredith 23:12

Silence. Silence. Silence.

Bowser 23:41

estuary. Eels can come right on up there, but there's also lots of, of smaller streams that feed that estuary, and that's where we catch our eels, where the smaller stream, boop! meet the title Hudson River estuary. That's where particularly at night. Eels are on the move, they come up, particularly with the high tide, they use that high tide to kinda, as a little jump up into those streams, as a little assist, and some of them get caught in our nets. Now we're, we're using relatively small gear, we're not commercial fishing, we're just, we're just trying to get a sample of what's coming in the stream. We're not trying to catch every little baby eel, we're just trying to use the same gear, at the same place, every year, so we can compare year to year to year. And site to site to site. We do this at about 12 sites, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, up the river. So we're not trying to catch every animal. We're just trying to catch enough to give us a snapshot every day of what's going on. One of the peaks, one of the valleys of that migration season. So we use those nets. So the teams of volunteers every site, every day, a team goes out, they put on their rubber waders, their waterproof pants like footie pajamas, wade out into the knee deep water, open up the net, and sometimes there are zero eels. That's what happens. That's, that's part of scientific data right there. Zero counts. It might be boring. but it's still data. some days they open up that net and there might be hundreds of eels squirming around in there and everybody freaks out and it's just like joyful. of course we have to count those eels by hand. And you know, after a few hundred eels, you're like, yeah, I get it. Okay, fine. But you know, that's part of science too. Like data collection is, is, is, can often be a lot more just like. Sheer hard perspiration work than like the Eureka moments. So we try to, we're kind of teaching that to our students and our volunteers. Like, hey, yeah, this is what field work is about. Some days it's beautiful, sunny, wonderful. Some days it's cold, rainy, miserable. And in all, in all sorts of weather as long as it's safe to be out, we'll be out there catching eels.

Meredith 25:54

And so you're catching eels to find peak migration and things like that. Are you also looking at year over year information to see? Okay.

Bowser 26:05

Yes. So we're, we're, we're trying to, we're, we're collecting data on a couple of things. One, one of the things we're interested in is like, okay, what is the timing of the email migration look like? When does it start? When does it stop? Is it, is it, is it, is it concentrated in a few weeks? Is it stretched out over a few months? Does it change from year to year? Does it change from site to site? Is there a lot of random variability in there? So we're, we're, we're, we're asking a couple of different questions as we go. We're also, in a way, kind of doing a, a, a little small scale restoration project. Because at most of our sites, when we catch our eels, let's say, okay, here's our, here's our 50 eels of the day, we're not just going to put those 50 eels right back in the stream by the net. For one thing, we don't want to catch them again. That would skew our data. That would mess up our sampling. Instead, we deliberately take those eels upstream. We, if we can, we go past a barrier or two, and we let them go. so we don't count them again, and B That's where they want to go, and we want to get them above these dams so they can get up into those watersheds. They can have a better access to more habitat. And that's, that's, that's also part of the sampling program of the sort of United States Coast Wide Agency. It's called the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or the ASMFC. They've got a really great set of protocols that state agencies follow when they sample, eel monitoring, when they study glass eels. We, decided to, to try the best we could to replicate those ASMFC quality control methods so that our data is now included. In that coast wide survey, it's like, okay, it's community science, it's trained volunteers, but because we follow those protocols, because we stay in touch with our agencies, because we're always trying to make the project as good as possible, our community volunteers are now contributing to a real official coast wide survey of eels that involves every state from Florida to Maine. So we're really, really happy that we can contribute to that.

Meredith 28:28

That sounds like a major achievement for a community science project to be able to be held to the same standard as the trained government workers who are out there doing the same surveys.

Bowser 28:42

Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. And it's, and it's, it's, it's because of a couple of things. One is, is we don't try to do too much. Like it's like, listen. We're going to do daily counts of eels, all right? We're not going to get involved in, in very, very detailed water quality monitoring or, or some biological assessment of the eels themselves. Like, nope, this is the data the ASMFC wants. They want some measurement of a daily or an hourly count of eels. Gotcha. We can do that. and also we, we stay in good touch with ASMFC. We, we, we're, we're always in touch with them. Hey. Can you, can you look at our protocols? Can we match you as much as possible? Can we be a part of the, the conversation about, about eel monitoring? And it's been a really wonderful relationship, both with our state agencies, the DEC, who are really the people in New York state who are in charge of, of eel monitoring, and also with this, with this coast wide agency. It's been a great partnership and I'm, I, I'm, I'm really happy that our volunteers get to be a part of that. And I think and I think they they get it too.

Meredith 29:48

That's, yeah, that's awesome. And when you were talking about how you're also doing a little bit of a restoration project, you brought up the dams again and these blockages. So let's, let's talk about it. Why, why are eels threatened?

Bowser 30:04

Okay. So there's a there's a for for all the nerds out there. A big shout out to one of one of our early mentors in our in our project is a Canadian scientist named John Castleman. And check out Castleman's work. He has his work is exceptional. Hey, Dr. Kastman, if you're listening and he has a great, he has a couple of great articles that basically, you know, sort of like lay out all of the threats against eels. And it's, and it reads like every environmental textbook you've ever read, you know. Water pollution is a part of it. Parasites are a part of it. Overfishing for food is a part of it, which we might get into. And climate change and changing habitats is a part of it, but also this idea of dams or interrupted stream. Connectivity is a huge, huge part of it. And so I can speak more on the Hudson Valley, which an area I know we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dams here in the Hudson Valley. Now, some of those dams, are you know, fulfilling really important purposes. Small hydropower in some cases, flood control and others, reservoirs for drinking water, got it. But honestly, there are a lot of dams here in the Hudson Valley that have purpose is long past. It might have powered a mill once upon a time. Or it might have been put in for aesthetics and now people are not living where they used to live along the river. So there are a lot of dams that are just anachronistic. They're just not serving a purpose at all, they've just been there. so one of the things that my colleagues at the Hudson River Estuary Program and the Watershed Division are doing is they're really promoting actual dam removal, or at least dam mitigation, to either provide for fish passage, or when possible, to remove a dam that is no longer serving a, a really strong purpose for society. Because remember, when you have a dam, That dam is also subject to time, and weathering, and age, and you do not want a dam to just go unexpectedly. we have a lot of dams that are, that are, you know, reaching a point in their lives where, you don't want this thing to go. A, a, a, a, a really controlled removal of that dam helps the property owners along the stream. And it helps the many, many species of animals and plants that rely on that stream connectivity. So there's a real, I think there's a, there's a really strong push in the United States, Europe and elsewhere to remove dams. And it is really, really cool. I can't wait to see that. I have a lot of colleagues in Europe. There's a great program called Dam Removal Europe and they're working at, again, this sort of controlled, scientifically viable removal of dams here in the Northeast United States, many different states are embarking on this. Our friends at the Nature Conservancy in Maine are doing some great work there on dam removal. So I, I like to think we're sort of in a rising tide of stream connectivity. Right now, and I hope it keeps going.

Meredith 33:11

Yeah, there's been some pretty major movements, I feel like, for stream connectivity. I know in Quebec, not too far from me. There was a really big push from the First Nations communities there, because they used to be able to travel from northern Quebec all the way, I believe, to New York. And now there's all these dam passages, so they were doing a symbolic canoe to show how important it was to reconnect these streams.

Bowser 33:36

Beautiful. It's

Meredith 33:37

Okay.

Bowser 33:54

I authored a paper called An Anguillid Lens Reconnecting, or How Eels Reconnect People in Waterways. And Dr. Gansworth is an Anishinaabe researcher. And, and, and she approached it from almost an indigenous values perspective, and I added kind of a community science perspective and that's that's a paper that anybody can, it's open access, anybody can take a look at it, you can put it in the show notes, and it kind of gets at some of these, these bigger level concepts about how you know, eels really, I, you know, I used the term ambassador earlier, and I really feel that way. They're, they're, they're a way of reminding us of, oh, wait a second, our streams can be reconnected. And they're a reminder of just sort of how not just streams are connected, but, but we're all connected. Waterways are connected. We always love, in an environmental science textbook, you're going to read about, oh, the interconnectivity of, of the watershed and the river and the ocean, like, la la la, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, eels live it. They literally are. They're not a symbol of interconnectivity. They are like the sinews and musculature of interconnectivity. So, like, Focusing on eels is a way of focusing on almost a giant umbrella that encompasses a lot of other species well being, including You know, water, things that are good for eels are also good for us. And that's a really important thing to remember about any kind of conservation. You know, I work for the, here in New York, I work for the Department of Environmental Conservation. And it's not just about conserving species for species sake. It's about conserving habitats for everybody's sake, including people and including different stakeholders. So that's a, that's a really important thing to remember is that when, yeah, we can talk about eels and connectivity and lots of other things, but it's important to keep people in that picture. People have had a long partnership with eels for thousands and thousands of years, and we want to keep that partnership going.

Meredith 35:59

We will definitely link that paper in our show notes. And yeah, I think it's also really important to highlight that, you know, these are really culturally significant animals as well that we're talking about for First Nations communities.

Bowser 36:15

Oh, absolutely. I mean, here in New York, the, the, to sort of the, the watersheds to the north of here, the, the, the Hoone tribal nations the eel clan is a really important and vibrant clan amongst, amongst the hoone. And we can. All over the eastern seaboard, you find you know, eel people still using traps, still, still relying on eel, still engaged in their survival, still engaged in, in their conservation. And that's a really important thing to remember. Yeah,

Meredith 36:49

going back to some of those other threats that we talked about, I mean, you were like, yeah, it's pretty much a classic list of what you would expect. But climate change. So are you seeing that they're adapting like temperature wise when you're or migratory window wise? Are you starting to see any changes like that?

Bowser 37:26

tributary temperature and even like coastal ocean sea surface temperature that basically in temperature sort of acts as a gateway. When the, when the, when a temperature hits something like, and you'll talk to different people, I think it's 36 degrees Fahrenheit. But when a, when a certain threshold is hit, it's sort of like the gate opens and the eels come in. And it's not like the warmer it is, the more eels there are necessarily. It's more again like that threshold or that gate that opens up and the eels come in. And we have, we have seen, you know, we've been doing our project now for, I didn't do the math ahead of time, but it's, It's got to be something along the lines of 17 years now, 16, 17 years. And we have seen over time it does, it does look when you look at the data, it does look like yule arrivals are coming in earlier. Now that isn't to say they, that, that the season is all earlier. Sometimes the season is drawn out. The relationship is complicated. Temperature almost seems like that gateway, but then other factors might play into the strength of the migration, the duration of the migration. Temperature does seem to have a really strong effect on that sort of arrival, that gateway into these watershed times. And again, you know, eels are really important to part of these ecosystems. These glass eels come in and if you think about it, these glass eels are actually a source of nutrients from the ocean. We always talk about everything running to the ocean, right? Everything's going to the ocean, going to the ocean. Well, baby eels are a little, you know, bite sized Atlantic Ocean flavored snack that's coming up the river and they're coming up the river at a time when primary productivity has not accelerated to what it's going to be in a couple months with sunlight and warmth and, and, and plant growth. So Glass eels are a really important source of nutrients coming into the system right when it's waking up from the winter time. So it's, it's really important to remember that interplay of water, temperature, and nutrients that glass eels represent.

Meredith 39:39

I think this is going to end up being a two parter interview because I like, can't, no,

Bowser 39:45

I talk a lot.

Meredith 39:46

there's, there's so much to dive into with eels. It feels like every time you answer something, I'm like, well, now I have five more questions, which is amazing. And then I hadn't really thought about how the nutrients would be coming from the ocean and how important that can be. I mean, once again, analogy to salmon, right? How important it is to get the salmon nutrients. To the grizzly bears and bring that actually like into the terrestrial habitat. So very cool. And then that nutrient component, should we talk about fishing? I've always heard that like the boom in sushi is like,

Bowser 40:23

about fishing.

Meredith 40:24

okay. Silence.

Bowser 40:46

And I really invite listeners in New York to go online and check out both the DEC and the DOH's websites as it pertains to if and where and what you can eat out of the Hudson River. So On a, on a larger scale, sort of on a global scale eels are delicious. Let's just say it. are delicious. Many people, you know probably for a lot of people, your, their experience with eating eel might be at a sushi restaurant or I should say people here in, let's say the Northeast United States or maybe in Canada, I'm not sure. That's probably the most common place to find eel to eat. But, remember that eels are a really important food source for a lot of different cultures. My hat's off to my colleagues in in Italy. a incredible town in Italy called Camacchio and that Camacchio is basically founded on a natural lagoon that has been shaped by people as sort of a, a, a beautiful place to, to find and capture eels for eating. There's a museum, there's a festival that's dedicated to the eating and the consumption of eels. They can't produce nearly as many eels now as they used to. and it's because there has been, you know, the, the 20th century was a rough century for eels. And I mean Angolid eels, not just American eels or European eels or Japanese eels. Though those three, those are kind of the big three that are, that are eaten. It was a tough decade. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, they label eels as, the eel population is being depleted. Meaning that the populations are historically way, way under historical numbers. So the populations are really low. Not in free fall yet, but really, really low. But, you know, other agencies, including agencies in Canada and international agencies, have, have listed various eel species as threatened or endangered. So there's a, there's a lot of eyeballs on eel populations right now, and eating them is a big part of that. There are there are legal glass eel fisheries in the United States, in the states, in the state of Maine especially, and a smaller fishery in South Carolina. There are other legal larger, let's call it yellow eel fisheries in multiple states. so there are, you know, there, there, people are still eating eels. But there's a lot of dialogue and there's a lot of conversation about, okay, at what level. Should that be happening? And then there's a lot of dialogue about the glass eel fishery. So, you know, there's quite a few eels that are harvested as glass eels that are raised to adulthood, we'll call it, in various facilities. Some of those facilities are in Asia. Some of those facilities are smaller scale aquaculture facilities. I've been to a great one here in the United States, there's another one that I've been to in North Africa and, and then these eels are grown, they are often then, you know, exported at to, at marketable size to be eaten elsewhere. Some of that is done under really tightly controlled circumstances where, you know, rules are followed, and quality and health. And things like toxins and hormones are dramatically limited, or, or just absconded altogether. And then sometimes, some of, but some of those facilities are not always so well controlled. So, at a stage right now where the eel fishery and eel consumption is, is, is kind of all over the place. So it's a, it's an ongoing debate and it's an ongoing challenge. of every regulatory agency right now on how to manage eels, eel fisheries, and eel consumption. And I don't want to, I don't want to paint anything with one big brush because it's very much a case by case, country by country, species by species kind of kind of situation.

Meredith 44:51

I think it's interesting that you're saying there's so many eyes on it because I actually think this fishery is actually getting into our pop culture and like our mainstream a little bit. Like I was watching a show with like Will Forte on Netflix and there was this bit about illegal eels and like, and I was like, Oh wow, this seems.

Bowser 45:13

how many how many emails and texts I got about that show. Have you seen it?

Meredith 45:16

I didn't, yeah, so it's, it's coming. I would expect more texts and emails in the future, but, and, and I guess you said that there's yellow eel fishery as well as glass eel is one more common or nutritious or dangerous than the others.

Bowser 45:38

No, I mean it gets to one of the things about eating eels is so eels can be a pretty long lived species. If eels are living in an environment that has that has sort of a legacy of toxic pollutants in it, and eels also have a high fat content, they could be accumulating, those toxins from the environment. so it all depends. So geography becomes very, very important. You know, where are these eels living and what are they eating? And what have, what are, what are their prey exposed to? It becomes a really complicated story of bioaccumulation and, and, and taking a look at, okay, in different places at different ages. do, what, what are different eel body burdens? And again, we're, we're talking about a species that's, it's mobile, they almost have personality. Not every eel is going to be having the exact same life experience as every other eel. So it gets to be, it gets, it gets complicated. I, I mean, I wish I could give you like, oh, here's the easy answer. It gets really complicated and you know, general as an eel advocate, I would say except under conditions where, where we can really maintain quality of legally caught eels that are, you know, sort of raised under high quality standards. It's, it's a risk. It's risky to eat eels for people's sake and for the eels sake, except under these, you know, circumstances where we can say, hey, this actually looks good.

Meredith 47:17

And that's a wrap on part one of this episode with the American Eel and Chris Bowser. A massive thank you to Chris for taking the time to chat with us. And if you left this episode, please subscribe so you don't miss part two, where we will finally get into all the things we can do to help yields. And if it's possible, the second half is even more loaded with fun facts. And if you could leave us a review, it really helps rarefied reach more people who care about our planet's rarest creatures. So don't forget to follow us on Instagram at rarefied pod and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates behind the scenes and sneak peeks at upcoming episodes. Next time we'll be right back with Chris and the American Eel. You won't wanna miss it, so get out there and explore the wild, because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. I'm your host Meredith Meeker. Thank you for listening. Happy Trails.