The eels drift en masse, driven by instinct and carried by the currents of the St. Lawrence River beneath the light of the moon. The journey should take them to their spawning grounds in the North Atlantic's Sargasso Sea. However, industrial development along the waterway means a great many meet their end not as nature intended –limp and spent, their larvae mingled with the ocean currents – but pulverized by the turbines of several large dams.
"During the downstream migration they have to pass the turbines and are killed," says Alastair Mathers, a management biologist and eel expert with the Ministry of Natural Resources.
The American eel, once one of the most populous species in Ontario, a backbone of the fishing industry and the stuff of First Nations legend, is in peril. Every year, turbines kill 40 per cent of eels at points along the St. Lawrence. Overfishing, dams and pollution are also culprits.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, in 1978 the eel harvest topped 500,000 lbs. From the early 1980s to the early 1990s the haul came in at between 228,000 and 273,000 lbs. every year.
Ontario's major commercial eel fishery closed its doors in 2004, but eels are still fished at several areas along the St. Lawrence, including parts of Quebec.
Every year an estimated 15,000 eels migrate upsteam through the river. At its peak, that number topped more than 1 million. "Really it's about a 99 per cent decline compared to peak years," Mathers says.
The American Eel has been identified under the federal Species at Risk Act. Earlier this summer, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Ontario Power Generation announced an action plan to restore their numbers.
OPG intends to spend $2.5 million on eels by the end of 2011. About $1 million of that money will be put toward finding ways to safely trap the eels and transport them around dams.
The stuff of sinister legend and summer-camp nightmares, the eel is not easy to love. Unless you are a scientist. "Eels are a pretty interesting species. To me anyways," says Mathers. "I think a lot of people are alarmed by their snakelike appearance."
Most local eels spawn in the North Atlantic. After they hatch, larvae – which in their early stages resemble willow leaves – drift on ocean currents until they reach the mouth of major rivers and move up the system to Lake Ontario. There they live for about 20 years until they reach maturity and start the long, slow drift back to the sea.
Fortunately for biologists charged with counting their numbers, eels heading upstream have been enjoying facilitated travel at one Ontario dam for more than 30 years. The R.H. Saunders Hydroelectric Dam in Cornwall is home to the eel ladder. Since 2000, additional eel ladders have been installed in dams in Quebec but the one in Cornwall was first.
Tucked inside the dam, the ladder is 150 metres long, ascends at a 12-degree slope in a zigzag pattern and is open for eel traffic during peak migration periods, from June to October.
It takes about 24 hours for eels to get to the top, with the quickest movement taking place at night. Once an eel reaches the pinnacle, it faces about a one-metre drop back into the St. Lawrence.
At that stage of migration, eels are between three and seven years old; the older members of that group averaging around 20 centimetres long. Adult eels can grow to a metre.
John M. Casselman, adjunct Professor with Queen's University's department of biology, said Canadian scientists have been trying to draw attention to the potential plight of eels since the early 1980s. In 1980, the first eel symposium was held in Toronto to address the subject of overfishing and turbine mortality. Even at that point the "writing was on the wall," Casselman says.
Beyond their biological value, Casselman insists that the eel's unique role in Canadian history should encourage their protection.
From the 16th to 18th centuries, eels represented half the fish biomass in the St. Lawrence, says Casselman. That information comes from records kept by Jesuits living alongside members of the Iroquois First Nations, who wrote, "The eel fishery is highly productive and enables people to live when all else fails."
Casselman says: "I maintain they were as important to the St. Lawrence Iroquois for food as sure as any fish was to North American natives."
Eels have very high fat content, offering anyone who eats them six times the amount of energy of any fresh water fish. A small piece of eel could sustain a hunter for days.
"The neat thing about it is there is only one fish that was raised to clan status by the St. Lawrence Iroquois and that was the eel," says Casselman.
"If you go to Oneida Lake in the United States now and ask First Nations people what clan they belong to, a lot of them are from the eel clan."
Strange eel behaviours also made them perfect winter food for people living in inhospitable environments. In winter, eels burrow into the mud. "They don't do it singly, they do it balls," containing as many as 200 eels, he says.
The eel balls made for easy fishing and there are records of colonists and First Nations people carving entire clusters out of the mud.
Following the arrival of the musket, fatty fish lost its lustre as a snack food.
Casselman is obviously concerned about the future of the eel population, but has faith in a creature that has changed only slightly in the last 100 million years and survived continental drift.
If only everyone felt the same.
"Anything that is slivery, slimy and serpent-like, for all the wrong reasons, maybe we loathe it.
"I think it's a fantastic animal."
