Endangered eels released into the Kennet in Berkshire
It's part of an environment agency project
Nearly 23,000 rare eels have been transferred from the river Severn into the River Kennet in Berkshire.
The eels were transferred in late April to nine locations on the Kennet chalk stream by Environment Agency fisheries specialists, initiating a research project that will monitor their development.
Endangered
Peter Gray, Environment Agency fisheries team leader, said:
"We are working hard to address the many struggles that eels face and are taking action to safeguard this critically endangered species.
"Over the coming months and years, we will closely monitor the released eels to see how they are surviving and growing. Eventually we want to discover whether this type of management produces more eels going out to sea to breed. "
Sargasso Sea
Eels are born in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean. From there, they float in their larval form on ocean currents towards Europe – journeying more than 3,000 miles for up to 2 years. Once they reach the coast, they turn into transparent glass eels up to 8cm long and then elvers, up to 12cm in length, swimming upstream into rivers. Here they live for around 6-10 years as juveniles/sub-adult yellow eels, before swimming downstream and eventually returning to the Sargasso Sea as mature adults to breed -silver eels.
In the 1980s, populations of the once-common eel started to decline all around Europe; the reasons for this are unclear but may be due to over-fishing, habitat loss and fragmentation, parasites or climate change. The numbers of new, young eels arriving at our shores are now a tiny percentage of those that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s.