154 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



their way into the neighborhood of the land 

 remains a mystery. It seems certain, however, 

 that all the young eels bound for the Gulf of 

 Maine complete the major part of their meta- 

 morphosis while they still are far offsbore. Thus 

 we have never taken one in the leptocephalus 

 stage in the Gulf of Maine in all our tow-nettings, 

 whereas (more significant) the Albatross towed 

 three young eels in the so-called "glass-eel" stage, 

 54 to 59 mm. long, of practically adult form but 

 still transparent, during her spring cruise in 1920, 

 one of them on Georges Bank, March 11 ; a second 

 on Browns Bank, April 16 ; and one in the western 

 basin of the Gulf off Cape Ann, February 23. 

 Evidently they were intercepted on their way in 

 to land. And since all three were on the surface, 

 we may take it that glass eels, like leptocephali, 

 keep to the uppermost water layers during their 

 journey. 



General range. — Coasts and streams of West 

 Greenland, 61 eastern Newfoundland, 62 Strait of 

 Belle Isle, and northern side of the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence south to the Gulf of Mexico, Panama, 

 West Indies, and (rarely) to the northern coast 

 of South America; also Bermuda; running up into 

 fresh water but going out to sea to spawn p. 153. 



Occurrence in the Gulf oj Maine.- — The occur- 

 rence of the eel around the periphery of our Gulf 

 can be described in the one word "universal." 

 There is, we believe, no harbor, stream mouth, 

 muddy estuary, or tidal marsh from Cape Sable 

 on the east to the elbow of Cape Cod on the west 

 but supports eels in some numbers, and they run 

 up every Gulf of Maine stream, large or small, 

 from which they eventually find their way into 

 the ponds at the headwaters unless barred by 

 insurmountable barriers such as very high falls. 

 Examples of long journeys by eels upstream, in 

 New England rivers, are to the Connecticut Lakes, 

 New Hampshire, at the head of the Connecticut 

 River; to the Rangeley Lakes at the head of the 

 Androscoggin, and to Matagamon Lake, at the 

 head of the East Branch of the Penobscot. Eels 

 are even caught in certain ponds without outlets, 

 as noted above (p. 152). On the other hand, we 

 have seen a few (and some large ones) along the 

 open coast, at Cohasset, for example, but always 



•' Jensen (Invest, of the Dana In West Greenland Waters, 1925, Eitr. 

 Papp. et Proc. -Verb Cons. Internal. Expl. Mer, vol. 39, 1926, p. 101) records 

 the American eel as one of the four fresh-water fishes known from the west 

 coast of Greenland. 



•> Reported by Dr. G. W. Jefiers as common. 



close in to the shore line and in only a few feet of 

 water, where flounder fishermen catch them from 

 time to time. 



Importance. — Schmidt has suggested that the 

 American eel is not as plentiful in actual numbers 

 as the European, arguing from the facts that its 

 larvae have not proven so common on the high 

 seas, and that the American catch of eels (about 

 2,000 tons yearly) was but a fraction as large as the 

 European catch (about 10,000 tons annually). 

 But it is not safe to draw any conclusions from the 

 statistics because the American catch is limited 

 more by the fact that eels are not much in demand, 

 than by the available supply. And the local 

 demand is less for them today than it was 30 

 years ago, as is reflected in a decrease in the re- 

 ported landings from about 305,000 pounds for 

 Maine and about 240,000 pounds for Massachu- 

 setts in 1919 to about 19,000 pounds for Maine 

 and about 32,000 pounds for Massachusetts in 

 1947. The yearly landings of eels along the Cana- 

 dian shore of our Gulf and from the tributary 

 fresh waters are 30,000^0,000 pounds nowadays. 



Practically the entire coastwise catch is made 

 in salt marshes, estuaries and stream mouths; the 

 numbers captured up stream are negligible of 

 recent years, except in New Brunswick where 

 16,000 pounds were caught in the lower sections of 

 the St. John River System in 1950. 63 In Germany, 

 however, where the demand for eels is much greater, 

 the yearly catch is nearly four times as great for 

 rivers and other fresh waters as it is for the coast. 

 And many millions of elvers were transplanted, 

 during the 1930's, from British rivers (the Severn 

 in particular) to landlocked bodies of water in 

 Central Europe which the young eels could not 

 reach naturally. 



The greater part of the catch is made in nets 

 and eelpots; and some are speared, mostly in late 

 autumn and winter, often through the ice. 



American conger Conger oceanica (Mitchill) 

 1818 64 



Sea eel 



Jordan and Evermann, Leptocephalus conger (Linnaeus 

 1758), 1896-1900, p. 354. 



" Information from A. H. Leiin. 



u The American conger had long been considered Identical with the Euro- 

 pean. But Schmidt (Nature, vol. 128, 1931, p. 602) has recently shown 

 that it is a distinct species, characterized by having fewer vertebrae; a rela- 

 tionship paralleling that between the American and European eels of the 

 genus Anguilla. 



