AN UNLIKELY RIVER CONSERVATION HERO: The American Eel

Yellow Eel by Gary Tyson

Dan Rhodes, Education Coordinator, BCCD
As the days and weeks go forward, the weather gets warmer and the days longer, many of us that enjoy recreation along the Susquehanna River in the form of boating and especially fishing, might be shocked to know about a poorly understood but highly important fish in our local freshwater systems: the American eel. Cagey and somewhat snake-like, the American eel is certainly a fish that many people today would not describe as overly majestic. Most people, if they were even lucky enough to see one up close would question if the animal were even a fish at all. Going back thousands of years however, the American eel was once a prized aquatic food staple for Native Americans and Colonial settlers alike. Additionally, in the past, just as is true today, the existence of the American eel is critically important to the health, water quality, stability and functioning of our aquatic systems as a whole!

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But how could that be you might ask…? How could a single species of strange looking fish be responsible for the overall health, stability and water quality of our local rivers and streams as we know them? That is certainly a fair question. One that has been slow to answer over the past few hundred years of scientific study. What we’ve finally come to understand about the eel is that it is considered to be what is known as a ‘keystone species’. A keystone species in nature is essentially a species that holds an entire ecosystem together. Another very recognizable example of this keystone species effect would be that of an American beaver. They cut down trees, dam up streams and create wetlands that would not otherwise exist without their influence.
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Obviously, eels can’t cut down trees, but their presence is critical to help keep our waters clean. As eels burrow through the mud and gravel of our waterways, they serve as a reproductive host for the many species of freshwater filter-feeding mussels that anchor themselves to this substrate. Without the eels, the freshwater mussels have very limited reproductive success and slowly disappear as they have alarmingly done over the past century. This domino effect of loss has largely happened because of the dozens of dams that have been constructed across the river that have prevented the eels from migrating, spawning, and returning up-river like they used to do for millennia. In turn, the loss of the mussels has meant the loss of an almost unfathomable natural filtration system in our rivers and streams. In fact, according to the PA Fish and Boat Commission, a historically healthy, single mile long stretch of Susquehanna River mussel bed would filter out algae and sediment from a staggering 2 to 4 billion gallons of water a day! Such amazing filtering capabilities would in-turn clean up the water for a greater mix of fish species to thrive, increase fishing opportunities and lower our municipal water treatment bills by many orders of magnitude.

To try and re-start this amazing wild mussel water filtering capability, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, and Bradford County Conservation District, along with additional agencies, have been for a few years, moving American eels up from below the dams they are trapped beneath and re-stocking them within the former range of the fish along the Susquehanna River. Hopefully when the time comes for these fish to migrate back to the ocean and reproduce, there will someday be appropriate fish ladders that will allow the eels to make their way up-river and down-river for these important spawning journeys. The only eels then, that are going to be found within most parts of the Susquehanna River are currently land-locked ones that are moved above the dams. Unfortunately, every state within the native range of the American eel have set fishing limits at 9” long individuals or larger, a quantity limit of 25 per day and an open season year-round, mostly because the data on eels and their issues is often hard to collect and difficult to interpret.

This all being said, because of the huge importance of the eels and the very limited nature of their existence in the upper reaches of the Susquehanna River watershed, we wanted to strongly encourage anyone that might catch one in the river, to please put it back!  

The Bradford County Conservation District is committed to helping people manage resources wisely.  You can visit the Bradford County Conservation District at 200 Lake Rd in Wysox across from the Wysox Fire Hall. Contact us at (570) 485-3144 or visit our web page at www.bccdpa.com.