Slippery as an eel: endangered species tracked down to Lihou
ENDANGERED eels have been tracked as far as the shores of Lihou.
To manage and develop a better understanding of the ecology of the European eel, which has been in decline since the 1970s, trackers have been attached to them by Belgium-based European research infrastructure LifeWatch, and one of the tags has been found washed up on Lihou.
Island warden Steve Sarre said he initially thought it had been attached to a porpoise that was found around the same time as he found the tag.
‘Although the tag and the body of the porpoise weren’t near each other, at first I’d thought it had come from that,’ he said.
‘I thought maybe with the storms they had just not washed up near each other and they had been battered around by the rocks.
‘But I sent the details off to the email on the tag and they got back to me about the tracker along with a link with lots of interesting info about their eel tracking project.’
The European eel, a catadromous [spawning in the sea] fish species, has a wide migration pattern which stretches from northern Europe in Iceland and Norway down to the Mediterranean to north Africa.
Since the 1970s, the European eel has declined by 90-99% due to climate change, fisheries, habitat loss and fragmentation, introduction of non-native species and pollution, leading to their critically endangered status under the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list and resulting in the European eel regulation in 2007. The latter states that all European member states need to take management actions to restore the population.
Monitoring the eel is used to study the movement behaviour of eels during crucial life stages such as silver eel spawning migration, using this information to aid cost-efficient management by creating innovative solutions to facilitate migration.
Marine biology researcher Pieterjan Verhelst, who is part of the Belgian research group studying the eels, said they are tagged with acoustic transmitters and pop-off tags which record temperature and pressure, coming off after a predetermined time – around six or 12 months.
‘We study the seaward migration of these animals, since not much is known about the species when they venture into the sea,’ he said.
‘To fill the knowledge gaps, we attach data loggers on their back.’
He added that the dolphin might have drifted in on the storm towards Guernsey as well.
‘It could be possible some other interesting stuff will wash your way,’ he said.
‘Another tag was found on Jersey last week, so very likely more are to be found in your area.’
So far, 392 European eels have been tagged with acoustic tags and 102 with the pop-off tags for the LifeWatch project.
To find out more about the project, visit www.lifewatch.be/en/european-eel.
