Folklore to the rescue of eels

Folk memory, songs, place names, and oral histories are being deployed by the Somerset Eel Recovery Project (SERP) in its work to bring this critically endangered species back to the Somerset Levels. Those stories and songs are a reminder that the Levels once teemed with eels – Sherds remembers visiting John Coles’ Sweet Track excavations in 1975 and seeing eels in the ditches and rhynes (the water channels used to drain the peatland meadows). Since then, the population of the European eel has dropped by more than 90 per cent in total, while eel numbers in Somerset’s Bridgwater Bay – once a thriving gateway for young eels carried on the Gulf Stream – has dropped by 99 per cent.