Newsletter Spring 2016 The AGM and the Eel Project he Eel Project is now half-way this edition we have an article on the and in particular what happens at through its two years as an historic importance of the eel as food; the Cley tidal sluice. Meanwhile the THLF funded pilot scheme in the Murray Thompson of UCL on a stan- eel has benefitted, along with other Glaven catchment. As part of this the dard, evidence based approach for the fish and wildlife, from past work on Norfolk Coast Project and the Norfolk survey of invertebrates; and a study habitat restoration and creation in Rivers Trust are running a programme on the Stiffkey on eel behaviour which the Glaven catchment, and this type of events over the coming months to we hope will now be extended to the of activity continues. further their engagement with local Glaven. The latter has been done by All this good news however is tem- communities. So this year the RGCG Adam Piper of the Zoological Society pered by some bad news, with a fish will break with our thirteen year tra- of London, and has relevance on how kill seen on 5th January at Natural dition of holding our AGM in May or the eel faces barriers. The last edi- Surroundings, but coming from the June on a Saturday afternoon, and tion carried an article by Alan Walker upstream area of Bayfield New River. instead link into one of these events. of Cefas, a study which aims to get Last June this stretch was shown to Our AGM will be held at 6.30 pm a better understanding of the eel life be performing brilliantly in the range at Blakeney Village Hall on Thursday cycle, and in particular the return and amount of species present; and 11th August, and completed in good Autumn migration. There was also a just 10 months after the project was time for the public event. This starts report from Willie Brownlow at Gland- completed. The most sensitive and at 7.30 pm, and is a film and talk: ford Mill on the Spring run of the in- affected fish was the brown trout, The River Glaven – a Norfolk Chalk coming elvers. and a survey in late March indicated Stream, and its Eels. Please make a The project has been helped by there had been a severe decline in note of this in your diaries now; as some earlier activities, in particu- trout on the New River stretch. It is always this Spring Newsletter is the lar the installation of a fish pass at difficult now to identify with certainty only notification of the AGM. Glandford Mill in 2012. However the the cause or causes. However there is As you will see from this Newslet- free passage of migratory fish, eel and much we can and will learn from this ter, and that of Autumn 2015, the Eel sea trout, is seen to be the remaining incident, see page 10 for an article on Project is making good progress. In most important matter to be resolved, various types of pollution. The Great Plenty: a History of Eels as Food Dr Ian Shepherd Illustration by Kate Dougan/NCP esearch carried out in Japan you minded to look, you could find the most abundant wild eel fishery in Eu- suggests that eels evolved be- European eel anywhere from Iceland, rope. There is evidence of some of the Rtween sixty and a hundred mil- around Scandinavia, through the earliest known settlements going as lion years ago, and that the ancestral Baltic, down Western Europe to the far back as nine thousand years ago. species arose in the western Pacific, northern coast of Africa as far east as The oldest is on the lower Bann, the near present day Indonesia. Perhaps the Suez Canal. On the other side of river which connects Lough Neagh to thirty to fifty million years ago the the Atlantic, the American eel extends the sea and acts as a gateway for in- primal species split into two groups. from Greenland and Labrador to the ner and outer migration. This includes One group moved west about twenty- Gulf of Mexico and Venezuela. These a line of wooden stakes connected by five millions years ago and perhaps two species start as larvae in different wicker-work; unmistakeably a four divided between an Atlantic contin- parts of the Sargasso Sea, but travel thousand year old precursor of the gent, consisting of the European and as larvae and glass eels on different sheagh, or fishing weirs, still used to- North American species, and the Afri- ocean currents day on the Bann to intercept eels. It can and Australasian species. So the The importance of eels in the diet is likely that these Mesolithic hunters eel is an ancient and primitive crea- of man has always lain in their great moved up and down between the lough ture, but not a simple one. Its sensory abundance, in particular in the mi- and the sea, occupying and deserting equipment is both highly complex and gration periods; and in their ubiquity camps according to the dictates of the still remains only poorly understood. in the 20-25 year period in the life seasons. Around 3000BCE the first For centuries man speculated on the cycle that an eel might be found in a Neolithic farmers arrived in the area life cycle of the eel. The extraordinary river or freshwater pond or lake. Even and the two groups may have co-ex- journey that occupies the first and in winter they might be disturbed in isted in passable harmony, the earlier last stages of its life has never been the mud and caught to provide a year concentrating on the specialised of witnessed by the human eye. round source of fresh meat. hunting and fishing, and trading their In between the arrival to our shores An insight into how our pre-his- captures for tools of polished stone as an elver, and the return as a mature toric ancestors lived has been pro- and earthenware pots. silver eel to spawn in the Sargasso Sea, vided by archaeological finds around In Continental Europe the remains an eel may be no further away from us the northern end of Lough Neagh in of prehistoric traps – in the form of than the nearest piece of water. Were Northern Ireland, which remains the stakes and woven fences – have been 2 RGCG Newsletter Above: Elvers caught on the 4th July at the Glandford Mill monitoring trap. Right adult Eels, all caught in the electro-fish survey at the Bayfield New River, 29th June 2015. found on the Danish coast where the eels of Lake Copais, bursts forth: ‘O ries the start of the annual elver run silver eels exit to the North Sea. Piec- my sweetest, my long-awaited desire’. saw Londoners wade in with muslin es of spear made of bone and horn In another of his plays, a sausage sell- nets, sieves and buckets. Yet by 1878 have been found all over Scandina- er shouts: ‘Yes, it is with you as with Houghton in his British Freshwater via and as far east as Poland. In cen- eel-catchers; when the lake is still they Fishes, recorded that ‘the eel-fayre, tral France, close to one of the main do not take anything, but if they stir once a striking and remarkable sight tributaries of the Dordogne, a carved up the mud, they do; so it is with you on the Thames, no longer exists, on ac- cylinder of stone was found in a cave when you disturb the state’. count of the filthy water around Lon- showing a human, two horses and The first record of eels in the Thames, don’. what appears to be an eel. Thousands at 1050, is the payment of a hundred Prior to that we have an early Vic- of years before Aristotle and his pen eels a year by the people of Oxford in torian curate David Badham in his of split reed scratched the first ob- return for leave to dig a navigation book Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle: servations and speculations about channel on church land. The Domes- ‘London…steams and teems with eels eels on his papyrus sheet, men who day Book listed a total of 22 fisheries alive and stewed; turn where you will lived by water had worked out all they on the Thames, which – calculated for and ‘hot eels’ are everywhere smoking needed to know to lay hold of an elu- taxation purposes – produced 14,500 away, with many a fragrant condiment sive but reliable source of food. They eels a year. The eels were speared, at hand to make what is itself palat- knew that through the summer eels netted, bobbed for, caught in baited able yet more savoury ….. For one half- fed and could be caught on bait; with traps, and intercepted in V-shaped penny a man in a million may fill his the coming of autumn they made their weirs known as kiddles. For centu- stomach with six or seven long pieces way downriver; and in the winter they and wash then down with a sip of the hid in the upper layer of mud. They glutinous liquid they are stewed in’. were good to eat, and ever-present; Eel Life Earlier again we have Shakespeare’s The European eel spawns in the and men have made nets, pots, traps Fool saying to Lear: ‘Cry to it, nuncle, Sargasso Sea, between Bermuda and hooks to catch them.