Elvers, also known as
glass eels, migrate across the Atlantic Ocean and arrive in coastal waters and lower rivers from January onwards.
Biology and Environment students helped us check our eel net in Hunter's Brook, This was the evening after the new moon, and with the strong tides and rise in Water temperature (52[degrees] F) we had high hopes, We felt more than saw the elusive
glass eels in the bag of the net and carefully moved them to our collection bucket to be counted and weighed.
Settlement targets would encourage action such as the introduction of eel passes in dams, allowing juvenile or
glass eels to migrate upstream.
By the time the leptocephali reach shallow offshore waters, they have transformed into colorless "
glass eels." These tiny snakelike fish pass through estuaries during the winter and then head up rivers the following spring, becoming yellowish as they grow.
American eels born in the Sargasso Sea travel a thousand miles to enter New York's estuaries as tiny transparent "
glass eels." They may spend twenty years here before returning to the Sargasso to spawn.
Our quarry this snowy March morning was
glass eels. We had set our trap to intercept these slender creatures as they made their inland migration to fresh water after having traveled from the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda where they hatched.