12 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
A CARGO OF EELS 
Barges with live eels from Canada. 
Photograph by C. H. Townsend 
On November 17, three barges, each over one 
hundred feet long and twelve feet wide, arrived 
from Quebec with 165,000 pounds of live eels. 
They were towed by way of the St. Lawrence 
River, Lake Champlain and Hudson River, and 
were thirteen days in transit. The barges are 
virtually well-boats or live cars, the sides and 
bottoms consisting of heavy slats, with quarter 
inch spaces between to provide abundant circu¬ 
lation of water. Each barge is divided cross- 
ways into tight, five-foot compartments, for 
proper control of the live cargo and to prevent 
fore and aft surge of water while in motion. 
All compartments are full of water to their 
hatches and the decks are almost awash. The 
barges have a draught of four feet. A crew 
of five men accompanied the tow, which was 
a consignment from The Live Fish Company 
of Quebec. The eels were sold alive in New 
York by commission, some of them to be mar¬ 
keted in Chicago and other cities. 
The eels are captured in the Quebec region 
of the St. Lawrence River in wire traps con¬ 
structed somewhat after the pattern of the great 
pound nets in lower New York Bay, and with 
similar leaders to divert the moving fishes 
toward the traps or pounds. The leaders are 
usually one hundred feet long, but in one case 
nearly a mile long. The traps are so located 
as to be left dry at low tide, when the eels are 
removed. The catch is made when eels are 
working toward salt water, 
and is heaviest during the 
dark of the moon. The sea¬ 
son is from July to October 
inclusive. Large as is the 
catch of eels in America, it 
is vastly more so in Europe. 
Here we avail ourselves 
of the opportunity to an¬ 
swer publicly the eternal 
question presented to the 
Aquarium about the myster¬ 
ious ways of the eel. Science 
knows more about the eel 
than it did some years ago, 
and the missing chapters in 
the eel’s life history have 
been supplied through mod¬ 
ern deep-sea investigations, 
rather than in the study of 
fresh or coastal waters 
where eels are more in evi¬ 
dence. Unlike salmon, shad 
and other fishes which en¬ 
ter fresh waters to spawn, 
the eel descends streams 
at maturity to spawn far at sea. The young 
eels, three inches or so in length, called elvers, 
that enter fresh waters in large numbers and 
are continually working up-stream, have always 
been known, but the stages of growth between 
the egg and the elver were not. In fact the 
newly liberated egg is still unknown. The next 
stage, in which the baby eel does not exceed 
three inches in length, is of comparatively re¬ 
cent discovery. We here find it a thin, flattened 
creature, so transparent that ordinary print 
may be clearly read through its body. When 
first described in this stage it was called Lep- 
tocephalus and was not known to be the com¬ 
mon eel. 
Females with ripe eggs are unknown, the 
millions of undeveloped eggs carried by each 
female not developing while the eels linger in 
fresh or coastal waters. The eels found far 
inland are always females and remain in fresh 
water for several years. When tending toward 
maturity, they seek the sea. Male eels remain 
in tidal waters, are smaller and less in evidence. 
Like females they do not reach breeding matur¬ 
ity until they have entirely passed to sea. The 
great bulk of the eel catch everywhere consists 
of females. Mr. Friedrichs of the Quebec eel 
fishery, says that all the eels captured there 
are roe eels moving down stream, and that males 
are not found. 
