DEAD EELS
BY THE THOUSAND
AT LAKE ELLESMERE CUT
CHRISTCHURCH, April 12.
It is no uncommon thing for scores of dead eels to be seen littering the shingle hank at Taumutu, separating Lake Ellesmere from the sen. An unprecedented state of affairs exists at the prevent time, however, for they are there in thousands. In places they lie in iieaps feet deep where they have been caught between the lake and the yea and left stranded by the receding tide.
••1 have berni here Cor twenty years,” said an old fisherman yesterday, “but L have r.over seen anything like it. On one occasion when the groyne was being put in, thousands were trapped and 130 scoop-fulls were taken out” lie addd, “but it is worse this time.”
It required no stretch of the imagination to believe the story, inexplicable though it may appear to those unacquainted with the locality. Even on the Taumutu side of the lake the shore was gH'ewn with bodies of all sizes, twisted in grotesque shapes. On the lake itself thousands were floating on the surface, attracting huge flocks of gulls and shags. At the groyne thousands upon thousands were trapped in a natural pit; BEATEN BY BREAKERS.
They had all been beaten back by the tremendous breakers which hurl themselves at the shingle bank at high tide. Their vain attempts to reach the sea were possibly in obedience to the instinct to go to sea to spawn. The bank, is about two hundred yards wide and the eels are forced to negotiate it. A high tide the seas break over the bank, adding another peril to the crossing, liven eels up to five feet in length have found the crossing beyond them and have been worn out in their continued ..truggles. The majority of thorn, however, are about- three feet in length.
“You should have been here on Sunday,” said a fisherman. “There were thousands more but the high seas and a southerly wind have carried a lot of them away.”
Very little is known about the habits of the New Zealand eel, although there is any amount of surmise. It is of the same species as the European eel, however, and the probability is that its habits are similar. There are two species in New Zealand which are known as the southern and northern, the long thin eel and the short thin eel, both of which occur in Lake Ellesmere, THE EEL’S HABITS.
An intensive study hase been made of the European eel. During the autumn months, it leaves the lakes and rivers and makes out to sea for a certain area iii the West Atlantic northwest and north of the West Indies. The eels spawn front early spring to well into .summer, They do not reach maturity until they are three years old by which time they have worked their way across the Atlantic and are off the European coast where they make their way up the rivers and stream.?. Having reached the fresh water their normal expectation of life is anything from five to twenty years or more. The large eels are the females and the small one the males. The only points the research workers in New Zealand can be .sure of is that the eels go to sea to snawn.
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Hokitika Guardian, 13 April 1932, Page 2
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550DEAD EELS Hokitika Guardian, 13 April 1932, Page 2
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