32: Inca Tern & European Eel
Ellen: Hello everybody, this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And we are here withJust the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast where we take your favorite species of animals and review them and rate them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics.
Christian: We are not zoological experts, although I like to think we get closer to that one step at a time every week.
Ellen: You're just listening to us take our very own independent study course in zoology.
Christian: From Google university.
Ellen: We don't just Google, Christian.
Christian: That's where it starts, for me.
Ellen: Listen, every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Christian: A single Google.
Ellen: Speaking of that, we do a lot of research and we make sure that we're bringing you information from good, trustworthy sources.
Christian: Definitely not made up.
Ellen: Definitely didn't make any of this up. Before we get into our animals, I wanted to just update folks with two quick things, the first of which was kind of a win for us. This past week was Giving Tuesday, and we were able to donate $85 to the Wildlife Conservation Network this year, and that was all of our ad revenue for this year.
Christian: Yeah, so that was one of our earliest goals with this project. So it was a good feel-good moment.
Ellen: It was really cool. And we were able to do that because of all the support that we have received from our Patreon and from our live show revenue and stuff like that, that was able to make it possible for us to donate our ad revenue. So if you listened to us at all this year, you had a hand on that ball, so thank you to everybody who helped us be able to do that.
Christian: Yes, thank you so much.
Ellen: And the second thing that I wanted to say before we get started is that this will be our final episode of 2019. We will be taking a couple of weeks off. We are blessed with a large and beautiful family and we have many obligations to attend to as Christmas comes up. So we're going to be taking a couple of weeks off, there will be no new episode for the rest of the year and we'll be back with- our next new episode will go up on Wednesday, January 1st of 2020. So, darling, what animal do you have for us this week?
Christian: This week, I have a recently in-demand bird.
Ellen: Yeah, you guys are going nuts for this bird.
Christian: The Inca tern.
Ellen: I love this friend.
Christian: Scientific name: Larosterna inca. The species was submitted by Dalton Weeks.
Ellen: And also, I think, Dustin Barnett.
Christian: So yes. Thank you all for submitting this species. Today, I'm pulling my information from three sources. First, the Jacksonville Zoo, specifically their website found at jacksonvillezoo.org.
Ellen: Woo woo! That's our zoo. That's our home zoo.
Christian: It is. Secondly, the National Aviary, which is found in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and their website is at aviary.org. And finally, an interesting pull, the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian.
Ellen: Okay....
Christian: Found at americanhistory.si.edu.
Ellen: Okay. I'll be eagerly awaiting our history lesson.
Christian: Yes, me too.
Ellen: Oh no. Why did you say that so deviously?
Christian: You'll see. So first up, I'll save the physical description of this bird mostly for the aesthetic section...
Ellen: [whispers] it's so good.
Christian: So, unfortunately I couldn't find a whole lot of technical details on this particular species. When I'm talking about adult size, I'm going to say pigeon sized.
Ellen: How many chickens is that?
Christian: Three quarters.
Ellen: We have really been slacking on our chicken measurements.
Christian: It kinda depends, right? Is it one of those buffed up Tyson chickens or...?
Ellen: No.
Christian: That chicken lifts. So this bird, the Inca tern can be found and the Pacific coast of South America, from northern Peru to central Chile.
Ellen: I'm assuming that's where the name Inca tern comes from.
Christian: I assume the same.
Ellen: Like, the areas populated by the Incan people.
Christian: Yeah. They belong to the taxonomic family Laridae. Other things that belong to that family are gulls, terns and skimmers.
Ellen: Gulls?
Christian: Yes. So the Inca tern is a seabird.
Ellen: Okay. I didn't know that. That's pretty cool.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: But now that I'm thinking of it, I can see the similarity in the shape of the beak to a gull.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah, so again, I'll talk more about this later, but one of the most unique identifiers of this species is this mustache.
Ellen: I love it.
Christian: Uh, so yeah, we talked about how it lives off the coast of South America and these are mostly on sea-adjacent areas like cliffs and islands and that sort of thing.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: I'll dive right into our first category of effectiveness. How well do they do the things they do? I'm giving the Inca tern a 7 out of 10. They catch their prey, which includes small fish like anchovies and crustaceans, by diving and dipping into the water.
Ellen: Oh, they're divers.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's pretty interesting.
Christian: Yeah. They kind of have that streamlined look, and you'll also notice they have webbed feet.
Ellen: That they do.
Christian: Yeah. So they're pretty good at that, catching their food that way. They flock by the thousands when feeding sometimes.
Ellen: Woah. I would love to see a big flock of these big pretty boys.
Christian: Ingenuity, I'm giving a 6 out of 10, primarily because they often follow fishing boats and surfacing sea lions looking for scraps.
Ellen: Oh, so they're a little resourceful.
Christian: Yeah. So you can see this with regular gulls, where there's a shrimp boat or a small fishing boat near shore, you'll see a bunch of birds flying around trying to... Being opportunistic.
Ellen: Are they as insistently annoying as seagulls?
Christian: I can only assume, yeah.
Ellen: We live in Jacksonville, Florida, which is very close to a beach, and the seagulls are less than kind.
Christian: Yeah. Don't feed them.
Ellen: They have a reputation. Well, you don't have to feed them.
Christian: They feed themselves.
Ellen: If you have food on the beach, they're going to get it. You don't have to give it to them.
Christian: Another point I'm giving them for ingenuity is when they're nesting, they'll sometimes use abandoned Humboldt penguin nests.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: Yeah. So they live in the same area as those penguins.
Ellen: Huh. How far South is that?
Christian: Well, keep in mind how far south Chile goes.
Ellen: It does go way down there. It starts to approach like, Antarctica.
Christian: Yup. But these are still penguins that are found in relatively warmer climates.
Ellen: Right. Okay. So yeah, I guess I was thinking of them being more like tropical, like warm climate birds. But then you said penguins and I was like, oh!
Christian: Yeah, I guess these are the penguins that are more used to being on land and rock rather than ice.
Ellen: Sure. That makes sense. Cause you also said that they're living on like cliffs and stuff, so. Okay, interesting. I hadn't thought of that being an overlap.
Christian: Yeah. And moving on to the final category of aesthetics, pretty self explanatory, I'm giving a full 10 out of 10 for aesthetics.
Ellen: Oh, they're so good. They're the best ones.
Christian: Yes. So earlier I mentioned they're mustachioed, and I'll give a general description for those that haven't seen a picture, although I suppose you will see a picture when clicking this episode.
Ellen: I'm going to put the best picture I can find as the episode cover.
Christian: They have gray feathers, they have red webbed feet and their beak is also red. They have white tipped wings and their mustache is white. And also they have a little splash of yellow coloration under that mustache.
Ellen: And the mustache is incredibly well defined.
Christian: Yeah!
Ellen: It is like an iconic, very well defined handlebar.
Christian: Yeah. And from my understanding, it's specialized feathers in some way. So that's my general ratings. The meat of this animal comes in it's fun facts, I think.
Ellen: Oh, that's my favorite.
Christian: So first I'll mention their conservation status. On the IUCN, they're listed as Near Threatened, with population trend decreasing. So, their population kind of comes and goes with El Niño so that affects their, like where they're at at any given time cause they're following the food basically. And next I'd like to talk about the reproduction just a little bit. Their courtship displays occur in midair.
Ellen: What!
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Oh my gosh.
Christian: And then they lay one to two speckled, coffee-colored eggs.
Ellen: Oh, I love that.
Christian: Yeah. I bet they're really cute. Now, my favorite thing.
Ellen: Let's hear it.
Christian: So one of the places that they're often found are known as guano islands.
Ellen: Oh no... Oh, gross.
Christian: So, this describes any island where sea birds are often found, so much so that they have a buildup of guano, which for those unaware, guano is the droppings of sea birds and bats are also described that way too.
Ellen: I feel like "guano" I usually hear in reference to bats.
Christian: Yep. I think something that made that popular was Ace Ventura. One of the Ace Ventura movies.
Ellen: You want to know something? I've never seen an Ace Ventura movie. I'm so sorry.
Christian: I highly suggest them. Or sorry, I highly recommend them.
Ellen: Okay, maybe we'll watch them together.
Christian: You know what? That might be in hindsight, though. It's been years and years and years since I've seen them. We'll see.
Ellen: We'll see how they hold up.
Christian: All right, so here's where this comes into play. This sent me on a, kind of a rabbit hole of what guano islands are all about. And what happened was the Western cultures started realizing how it's good as a fertilizer. So the native people of South America had been using him as fertilizer for a long, long, long time, and actually in the 1500's the Spaniards saw this and they were just like, "no, that's gross." And then they, they didn't do anything with it.
Ellen: That's hilarious to me that they saw them using like, one of the most potent fertilizers that naturally occurs in massive quantities and is completely free and they saw this like, incredibly innovative and useful technique and they were like, "Oh nasty. Let's not."
Christian: So hundreds of years later, in the mid 19th century, the U.S. had an insatiable appetite for guano to enrich its worn out crop soils.
Ellen: Please don't phrase that sentence that way. Please don't lead with the U.S. having an insatiable appetite for guano. Don't say it that way.
Christian: It is uh, validated because our 13th president Millard Fillmore, in his 1850 State of the Union Address, part of it included this, and I quote...
Ellen: This is a way weirder pull than I thought we were going to get.
Christian: So this is where the U.S. history comes in: "Peruvian guano has become so desirable and article to the agricultural interest of the United States that it is the duty of the govern... [laughter] It is the duty of the government to employ all the means properly in its power for the purpose of causing that article to be imported into the country at a reasonable price. Nothing will be omitted on my part toward accomplishing this desirable end. I am persuaded that in removing any restraints on this traffic, the Peruvian government will promote its own best interests, while it will afford a proof of a friendly disposition toward this country, which will be duly appreciated."
Ellen: It is the what of this country?
Christian: It is the DUTY of this country.
Ellen: [laughing] We are grown adults, both of us. We have cars and mortgages.
Christian: So this leads to the Guano Islands Act of 1856.
Ellen: That shouldn't have an act.
Christian: It did, which it came about for the sake of sea bird droppings, used as a powerful fertilizer such that the U.S. Congress authorized our nation's earliest significant expansion beyond the continent.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: So prior to this we had been mainly expanding in the continental, what is now the United States.
Ellen: Okay. So I didn't think Inca terns were going to play that integral of a role into our...
Christian: So not just Inca terns, it's other seabirds. But I thought this was an interesting connection.
Ellen: That is.
Christian: So, yeah. And a quote from the National Museum of American History, you know: "the Guano Islands Act stated that any guano islands and claimed or unoccupied by others could be claimed and mined, and the guano delivered to the United States at a low price for the benefit of its citizens. This act authorized our nation's earliest significant annexations of lands beyond the continent." So we know this went on later. Right? Cause we have even a state now that's not part of the continent, and other territories and such. So I'm not saying all of our non-continent territories were because of guano, but it just so happened to be the first ones we got were because of guano.
Ellen: That's hilarious.
Christian: Yes. The boom didn't last for long, cause I think with a combination of the industrial revolution and because of improvements in how synthesized fertilizer was coming along, it wasn't needed anymore. But also a problem with sending a bunch of ships and people to collect guano is that you scare away the birds.
Ellen: Oh, yeah that's true. And then they will poop their less.
Christian: Correct.
Ellen: Hmm. Interesting. That's a delicate balance that you have to navigate.
Christian: One that I'm sure the native peoples of South America were able to do, but of course with something like this at that magnitude, it's easy to just go in and wreck things.
Ellen: Well, yeah, I mean when you're pulling up to Guano Island with a big old boat.
Christian: Yeah, several boats. It's lots. The Inca tern.
Ellen: That took some tangents I wasn't expecting, but you know what? That's what we're all here for. So, nicely done babe. Thank you very much.
Christian: Any time.
Ellen: This feels like one of those situations where when you're in school and you have an essay that you're supposed to write, and you have a prompt for the essay and you kind of start off following the prompt, and then like about two paragraphs in, you start writing an essay about a completely different topic and you just stray so far from the topic that like, it's no longer the same essay.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
Ellen: It's very good. I know so much more about the history of bird poop than I did 20 minutes ago.
Christian: I thought it was interesting.
Ellen: It is. You're right. Before we move on to my animal, I want to take a quick second to thank our patrons on Patreon. We've got Briana Feinberg, Krystina Sanders, the Jungle Gym Queen, Jacob Jones, and Ashley Tucker. Thanks y'all!
Christian: Thank you so much. Alright hun, what animal do you have for us this week?
Ellen: This week I'm talking about the European eel.
Christian: Real eel?
Ellen: This is a real life eel. This is a legit one because...
Christian: Ree-eel.
Ellen: You ever go fishing and you reel in a real eel?
Christian: Oh, jeez. All right, tell me about this eel.
Ellen: Okay, so first of all, scientific name is Anguilla anguilla, and I'm pretty sure that's how you pronounce it [ang-WILL-a]. I looked it up to make sure, because I looked at it and it's spelled like maybe it would be a Spanish word. And you know, we're from Florida where we have a lot of exposure to the Spanish language. And my assumption was that it would be pronounced "ahn-GEE-ya" cause that's how it looks like it's pronounced. But then I found out that it actually comes from the Latin word for eel, and that's not how they do Latin. So the best I could find was Anguilla anguilla, so I'm really doing my best here. So this species was not requested per se, but it was inspired by a tweet that I saw from one of my favorite Twitter accounts, the handle is @FunEelFacts and it's just really fun, and I enjoy seeing a lot of stuff about not only eels but also like knife fish and lung fish and stuff like that.
Christian: Something about those and Twitter. Right?
Ellen: There is a heavy eel presence on Twitter. There's a lot of eel appreciation on Twitter, yes. I've learned a lot about it. But so I'm getting my information on the European eel from the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web, love them, and also the European Eel Foundation, which can be found at europeaneel.com.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So, the adult size for the European eel females are actually larger than the males, so females can be up to 65 centimeters or 2 feet long, and males up to 40 centimeters or 16 inches long, and that is at their kind of maximum size. Their location, you know, they're called the European eel, but um, they're not always there. So their location kind of depends on where they're at in their lifecycle. So stay tuned, we'll- TBA. We'll come back to that.
Christian: Alright.
Ellen: Their taxonomic family is called Anguillidae, this is the family of the freshwater eels. So way back in episode 2, you talked about the electric eel, which you revealed to us is not actually an eel.
Christian: Correct.
Ellen: It's just long and snake-shaped, so they called it an eel. And the electric eel is a knifefish, that you mentioned way back when. So this is a real life eel. This is an actual one. So true eels belong to the order Anguilliformes. Now they're their freshwater eels, but not 100% freshwater eels. This is really cool. So to get into my ratings, first rating up is effectiveness. And for effectiveness, I give them an 8 out of 10. So, since eels don't have pelvic fins to propel them through the water, you know their upper and lower fins are all fused together, right? To make this one sort of ribbon-shaped fin that goes all the way down the body. So eels swim by undulating their body in a wave shape and the wave sort of rolls down their body. So it's not only really neat to watch, it's a little bit hypnotic almost, but it also allows them to swim backwards.
Christian: Woah!
Ellen: Yeah. Not a lot of fish can swim backwards. There are other fish that are not eels that can do this, but not that many of them. But so eels are a little bit special for their ability to swim backwards.
Christian: Nice.
Ellen: That's pretty cool. So for me, the European eel's biggest effectiveness factor is its hardiness. So they can survive and breed in a wide range of temperatures, and they can also regulate the balance of fluids and salts in their body that allow them to live in salty, brackish and fresh water. So this is really important. This is called osmoregulation, and this brings me to the most impressive thing about the European eel: it's lifecycle is nothing short of Herculean. It is absolutely ridiculous. So what's kind of funny is that way back when, Aristotle kind of took a stab at guessing at the eel's lifecycle and his- Aristotle came to the conclusion, after what I'm sure was rigorous study, that the eel was spontaneously generated out of the mud.
Christian: What!
Ellen: Yeah. Just showed up. It just appeared! So close. Not quite though. So the eel larvae are actually already independent when they hatch, and they hatch in this place called the Sargasso sea. And this is a region of the Atlantic ocean, it's pretty close to North America, but it doesn't actually have any land boundaries. So it's a sea, but a sea that's contained completely within the Atlantic ocean.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So the European eel is a little bit Pokemon-like in its development in that it goes through these very distinct changes in its physical form as it develops through life. So they're born as these tube-shaped transparent larvae, and then when they get a little bit older, they develop into what's called leptocephalus larvae. They're still see-through, but they're kind of like a leaf, where they're sort of vertically flat. You know what I mean? Like, like how the eel has that sort of ribbon shape, but it tapers to a point at the end, so it looks kind of like a leaf or maybe a long piece of seaweed. And in that state, they're still transparent so you can see all their bones and it's a little bit spooky. But so they stay in this stage for about a year, and in this stage they drift along ocean currents and the ocean currents carry them all the way over to like, Europe and Northern Africa.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: And then once they're there, they metamorphose into glass eels. So this is what you'll hear them kind of referred to as most often, but it just refers to a specific stage in their development. Glass eels, where they're tube-shaped, they have that kind of like iconic eel shape, and they're still transparent at that point. So from here they enter into estuaries and freshwater systems, and then once they're in there, their pigmentation changes to a grayish brown color, and at this point they become what are called elvers. So, as elvers they migrate- they migrate upstream, actually into freshwater systems kind of throughout Europe. They can even travel across land for short distances. Yeah. It's a little- kind of gross, but oh well. Like they're, they're going for it. And they will live in fresh water for many, many years before maturing into their final form, which is called the silver eel where their like gray color changes to more shimmery silver. And in this form, they stop feeding completely and they rely on whatever energy they have already stored to carry them through this final phase of their life. And this is when the eel travels back down stream out of the freshwater systems it's been living in and growing in and it crosses the Atlantic ocean again and returns to the Sargasso sea.
Christian: Wow!
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: That's quite the journey.
Ellen: Yes. So it's come all the way over from like, close to- almost like, close to the Caribbean all the way over to Europe and then turned around and came back.
Christian: That's intense.
Ellen: It's crazy. And then it gets crazier when you find that they only breed once in their entire lifetime, laying one clutch of eggs. So being closely related to Japanese eels, Japanese eels lay between 2 and 10 million eggs at a time.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yes. So nobody's actually seen the European eel lay its eggs, so nobody has a good number on how many it lays at a time. Apparently this area of the ocean is very, very difficult to monitor because there are like no structures in that area. There's no landmarks or anything. It's very difficult to keep track of anything in this area of the ocean. So nobody's actually seen them lay eggs, so nobody knows for sure how many they lay at a time. But we can guess that it's in the millions because that's how Japanese eels do it and they're closely related.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yeah, so the female comes out there and she lays her millions of eggs and then she dies. That's it. End of life. She just lays the one clutch of eggs. And they do that thing where they will, the females just lay the eggs and then they die, and then the male comes along and fertilizes them. So they don't necessarily mate. Right? They just lay the eggs.
Christian: I think we see this with some species of fish, like salmon and that kind of thing.
Ellen: It's a common thing for fish. Yeah. This is how they do. So obviously the larvae have to be self-sufficient when they hatch because there's nobody there to take care of them or protect them or anything.
Christian: And this happens in that special part of the Atlantic?
Ellen: Yes.
Ellen: Okay.
Ellen: So like this all obviously very impressive, right? They've gotta be pretty tough to be able to withstand that kind of journey. I deducted a few points for the fact that they've pretty much bumped up their difficulty settings on life. Like they're like, playing on legendary mode for like no reason.
Christian: I'm gonna be a fish, but like, Nuzlocke challenge.
Ellen: They're traveling thousands and thousands of miles to reproduce, they immediately die once they reproduce. So they've only got just that one shot, and then the whole thing of just being done with eating, once they become adults, they're like, that's it. I don't need to eat anymore. Which makes me think of like moths, how a lot of moths will do this. Like the luna moth is one example I can think of where like, once it reaches its adult form, it's just done eating. It's like, sorry, I only have one goal now that because they don't have the parts to eat anymore.
Christian: I think that with the Luna moth they just lose their mouth entirely.
Ellen: Yeah. But so I just thought that- I just think that's just so extra. Why are y'all doing the most like that? Moving on to ingenuity, I give them a 5 out of 10 for ingenuity. So their migratory path is about 5,000 kilometers, or 3000 miles long. That's a lot. And the eel is only like a maximum of two feet long. So that is a lot of ground to cover for this little dude. So that made me think, how does it know where to go? How does it know how to get back to where it needs to go and like, how does it keep coming back to the same- not the same exact spot, but how does it keep coming back to the same area? So, according to a research article that I found titled "Glass eels have a magnetic compass linked to the tidal cycle," and this was in Science Advances in June of 2017, so what they found was that the eel orients itself in the water in alignment with magnetic fields both in the sea and also in laboratory settings.
Christian: Wow!
Ellen: Yeah. So that kind of shows that they can both detect magnetic fields and that that is what they're using to determine what direction to go. In. Another study that I found, a 2016 study showed that not all of the eels take the same path or travel at the same speeds. They kind of find their own way there with a lot of variety. So some of them go in just very, very different paths than others. And this ends up giving them very staggered arrivals at their breeding destination. So it's not like they all show up at once and breed and then that's the end of it until the next year, it's like they'll show up at different times because they've taken different paths and gone in different speeds.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: Yeah. But if they don't show up within the right season and the water is not the right temperature, then they'll just stay there and they have to wait for the next breeding season.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: Yeah. So it's kind of thought that this variation in their migratory paths gives them better chances of actually making it to the sea.
Christian: Yeah. Cause if there was like, I don't know, a couple of weeks every year where there's just millions of eels coming around, there would be animals waiting, right? To eat them.
Ellen: Sure. Like maybe it makes them a little bit harder to catch or it just like gives them a better chance of survival. But yeah, it's not like every single- it's not like you'll see like, butterflies or certain types of birds or something where they have a very, very specific and exact route that they'll take consistently. Eels are kind of going their own way. The eels are a little bit more independent than that. Another point that I gave it for ingenuity was that they burrow into the mud to hide during the day and they come out to feed at night. And they can also burrow in sand and hide under rocks to escape predators, which I think probably is why Aristotle thought that they were like, created in the mud, but he thought that this was like, a spontaneous generation thing and that they just are birthed into being by the mud. Like a mud golem or something that's just born of mud.
Christian: I was about to say, it kind of reminds me of a Lord of the Rings thing where they were talking about how drawers were born.
Ellen: Yeah, I so I guess that's what he thought was going on with eels, but not the case. Which it kind of makes sense that he would think that having never seen them, like breed and spawn and stuff cause they're doing it in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
Christian: I guess?
Ellen: So it kind of makes sense cause he's never seen them hatch or anything because he would have only ever seen them in that like juvenile form. So I guess you can't fault him too much for coming up with wild guesses. But still, it's funny, I'm going to dunk on him anyway. So another thing that the European eel will do is they'll hibernate during the winter. So they go into an inactive state called torpor when temperatures start to drop and they'll actually burrow into the mud and they'll go into the state of torpor and they'll wait until- cause a lot of times during these colder seasons, like river beds will dry up and stuff, so they'll, they'll wait until the water comes back.
Christian: That's interesting.
Ellen: Yeah. It's a cool way for them to conserve energy until things warm back.
Christian: Is this eaten? Like by people?
Ellen: Yes, very much so. That's in my- that's in a later thing.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So, uh, last category for the European eel is aesthetics. I give them a seven...? Seven. Seven out of 10. They have a cute, rounded, snake-like face. If you look at their face, it kind of looks like a Python, like a ball python's face a little bit to me. I think it's pretty cute. Um, and also the leaf shape of their leptocephalus stage is really, really cute. It's, it's just a really pleasant, like pointed leaf shape. I think it's adorable. But other than that, not a lot going on in the looks department. Right? Nothing's super special about them. They're very much like, kind of your standard-issue starter kit eel. It's just, it's an eel y'all. I dunno what else to tell ya. So to wrap up with some miscellaneous information, this was kind of why I wanted to talk about this eel. Their conservation status is critically endangered.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: Yes. They are doing very, very badly. Actually, not too long ago, their what's called their recruitment rate, which is the amount of baby eels that were being hatched, was as low as 1% of what it had been in the '80s.
Christian: Wow...
Ellen: Yes. So their numbers were just absolutely abysmal. They were in the garbage can. So some of the greatest threats to European eels, according to the IUCN, include barriers to migration, so structures like hydropower turbines and water pumping stations in Europe.
Christian: Yeah...
Ellen: Yeah. So this can cut off the eels from being able to travel freely to and from the ocean.
Christian: Oh...
Ellen: Yeah. So they could like not be able to get into the rivers and stuff that they normally need to get into because of these barriers. There's also, of course, degradation and loss of habitat and pollution causing metabolic disruption to the eels. You know, cause they're absorbing a lot of that into their body, including- this is wild, I'm not going to go too deep into it, but I just wanted to put it out there: illicit substances such as cocaine in the rivers that they, you know, live in. So... Sorry about the coked up meals. But...
Christian: Man.
Ellen: Yeah, other things- I have so many things. Another thing is a changing oceanic conditions influence the currents that have to carry the eel larvae in from the sea. Right? Like that's what they're using to get into these freshwater systems, and when the currents change, they're not getting to where they need to go so they can't develop. So that's just- and then finally, overfishing in places where European eels are caught to be eaten. Since the European eel has to travel over such huge distances and it has to be, you know, shifting between saltwater and freshwater and it's just, it's so demanding and its needs, they've never been successfully raised in captivity. So, if you're going to eat them, you have to catch them from the wild. So conservation efforts have been put in place trying to raise eel numbers, and one of those efforts was a ban on the exportation of the European eel and that was put in place by the EU in 2010. So it's now illegal to export European eels from the EU.
Christian: So I know you're not a fan of eating fish in general.
Ellen: Yeah, I don't eat seafood at all. So this is all equally gross to me.
Christian: But to me, I've had eel plenty of times, but it's always been in the same context, and that is sushi, or Japanese food in general.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: Very tasty in my opinion. But I'm wondering what species is that normally?
Ellen: I don't know what like kind it- what is it, unagi? Is like the word that they use for eel that they put in sushi? But so, I thought this was interesting. Another conservation effort for the European eel has included trapping the juvenile eels and then transporting them where they need to go. So like, kind of helping them navigate around those barriers that are keeping them from migrating, like they'll go out and like, say there's eels that are trying to get like into a river but they can't get through because there's like, I don't know, a water station or something. They'll like, go trap the juvenile eels, put them in a bunch of coolers I guess, I dunno, coolers and tanks and stuff, and they'll actually transport them over land and take them to where they're trying to get and then set them free. Kinda like human bridging them. Which I thought was a neat idea that that was pretty cool.
Christian: Whatever works.
Ellen: Yeah. And also the activity of fisheries that catch wild eels has been severely limited. So now they say that you have to leave at least 60% of the wild eels in the wild in order to have enough to replenish the population.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: Yeah. So my last little fun fact I want to include in here is a fun history fact that I learned from John Wyatt Greenlee's website HistoriaCartarum.org, and what I learned from this is that documentation from medieval England records taxes from territories being paid to royalty including massive numbers of eels. Say you were, you know, a landowner and there was royalty that you needed to pay taxes to, your taxes wouldn't necessarily be like an amount of gold or coins. It would maybe be like you know, 50 apples, 30 pounds of carrots, 300 eels. So like, eels used to be sort of used as a bit of currency and that was recorded in Europe all the way up until like, the Middle Ages.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yeah, it fell out of fashion to eat eels in Europe at least. It kind of became less popular over time. Like, eels became less of a desirable food item, and then I feel like they kind of fell out of cultural relevance because people weren't eating them, so people weren't really thinking about them. You know? Like I feel like when I, even before I learned all of this stuff about the European eel, I felt like, you know, when you told me that the electric eel was actually a knife fish, I realized that I actually knew literally nothing about eels because that was the one I thought I knew anything about. And it ended up not being an eel. But so yeah, I was just really happy to get to learn a lot more about eels in general. And I thought they were really cool. And this one is really neat and I had no idea that it was so critically endangered, but it is. And so it was really interesting to learn about.
Christian: That's awesome. Thank you honey.
Ellen: No problem. Thank you. Oookay, that's all we have for this week, so thank you everybody that's joined us this week and in all previous weeks. We have seen like, a lot of growth recently and that's been really great. So I am really happy for all the new people that have been joining us. So thank you so much and thank you also for the kind words you've been leaving us in your reviews. That really makes my day and it just makes me want to keep making this show and that's really great. So you can connect with us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and if you have an animal species that you want to hear us talk about, you can submit those to us. Either get those to us on social media or email them to me. My email address is ellen@justthezooofus.com. A transcript of this episode and all others, as soon as I finish the last couple that I haven't done yet, those will be found at www.justthezooofus.com and finally thank you to Louie Zong for allowing us to use your song "Adventuring" off of your album Bee Sides.
Christian: Yeah. Thanks everyone.
Ellen: Thank you everybody.
Christian: Happy holidays, and have a happy new year.
Ellen: Yes. We'll see y'all in 2020. That is a wrap on 2019.
Christian: I was going to make it 2020 vision joke, but I decided not.
Ellen: Do you have to?
Christian: Nope. Bye everyone!
Ellen: Bye!