By Michael Fager, Volunteer Eel and Herring Monitor
I do not normally count eels on Mondays, but I told Julie Berkman that I would cover for her because she is moving and could not do it.
To set the context, on Friday, July 9th Tropical Storm Elsa dumped over 2.5 inches of rain on the region in about 12 hours. Needless to say, the Mystic and its tributaries were running high. Then on Monday morning a rainstorm dropped over 1.1 additional inches of rain. Before these events, the river was already running high because of the heavy rain we had over the July 4th weekend. On July 6th and 7th I counted eels and there were over 700 over the two days. However, on Friday, right after the storm ended, someone looking in the eel box told me there was only one eel.
Eel box with thousands of American eels. (PC Michael Fager)
Monday when I opened the box there were so many eels it looked like a black mass and I couldn’t see the bottom of the box. There were eels everywhere. I could even see them coming off the ramp and into the box. I immediately texted Patrick and Andy and told them of the situation.
I started counting and moving the eels. After moving 450+ eels without putting a dent in the number of eels in the box, I sent out a request for help. Patrick Herron, Executive Director at MyRWA, and Kathy Foley responded. The three of us were able to move the eels. Patrick was more efficient in counting the eels (his was more of an estimating method over my more deliberate counting method). But even with that and the three of us working, it took more than 2 ½ hours but we moved them all. The final count was 3,892.
Process of counting eels. Each bucket in this image has approximately 230 eels. (PC Michael Fager)
We have never seen this many eels in a single day since MyRWA started counting eels in 2012. However, Brad Chase, Diadromous Fish Project Leader, DMF, told us:
[W]e have seen this at the Mystic and other eel ramps before. Increases in count numbers with late season rain events. Very site-specific (watershed location) and season related. Usually at most sites . . . eel movements slow down to a crawl in the heat of July and August. Mystic seems to be a site where July rains like this can trigger large movements of age-1+ eels. Conversely, early season rain events can shut eel movements down due to some combination of lower temperature and higher velocity. We suspected this was the reason for this large movement of eels. We also noticed that many of the eels were larger than those we normally move.
All in all, it made for an exciting day counting eels.
Want to learn more about the American eel migration? Check out AMERICAN EEL: A HIDDEN MIGRATION IN THE MYSTIC by Michael Fager
