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.
It was only in 1904 that scientists finally worked out that eels are born in the spawning grounds of the Sargasso Sea, east of Bermuda, from where ocean currents enable them to travel to northern Europe over a two- to three-year period. They then migrate up freshwater rivers and streams to spend 10 to 15 years growing to maturity, before returning to their saltwater birthplace to mate and die.
Folklore tells us that eels will climb walls, propel themselves across wet grass, or slither over each other in order to overcome obstacles. Based on this, SERP has experimented with the use of rope ladders to help the eels navigate river barriers such as hydro-electric dams. Engineered fish ladders are expensive and take time to plan and construct. Ropes woven from dried grass and straw and draped over weirs and dams have proved to be a successful way to provide a natural ladder that eels can use to move upstream. SERP now runs rope-making workshops, and citizen scientists regularly visit the weirs to count the migrating eels, helping to monitor how many make the journey.
