How Those Eels Got Into Walkers Pond
I find this information about Eels to be amazing. The first picture is of the dam in Bishopville taken by Dr. Roman Jesien, Maryland Coastal Bays program the first week in April. He says this is an yearly occurrence. That squiggly mass that you see climbing the wall of the dam are only about 5 inches long and fit in the palm of Dr. Jesien’s hand. Those eels are trying to return to the waters where their “parents” came from. Imagine these little creatures came all that distance without the aid of a GPS.

The $1.7 million restoration project is a cooperative effort among the Maryland Coastal Bays Program, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, US Army Corps of Engineers, State Highway Administration, and Worcester County to remove the existing dam at Bishopville, landscape the area, and restore the stream and streamside vegetation.

The project will remove the dam at Bishopville while still retaining a portion of the current pond. A series of pools and riffles will be built to allow fish to pass up the creek and open about seven miles of stream habitat for anadromous fishes (anadromous fish live in the ocean but spawn in freshwater). Such fish like salmon, herring, rockfish, and shad have been hit hard by two centuries worth of dam building.

When complete, the project will allow resident stream fishes to have access to a larger area and more salt tolerant species would have access to upper stream areas. American eels are currently able to pass the dam, but white perch and hickory shad are found only below it. The opened area would provide habitat for spawning and a nursery. Spawning habitat exists for river herring and runs could be established from transplanting populations from other coastal rivers.
American eels begin their lives as eggs hatching in the Sargasso Sea, a 2-million-square-mile warm-water lens in the North Atlantic between the West Indies and the Azores. After hatching, the buoyant eel eggs float to the ocean surface and hatch into small, transparent larvae shaped like willow leaves. These larvae drift with the Gulf Stream and other currents, taking about a year to reach the Atlantic coast. By this time, the larval eels have developed fins and the shape of adult eels. In this first phase, the juveniles – called glass eels – are without pigment and still transparent. In the second phase, juvenile eels develop gray to greenish-brown pigmentation and are called elvers. Juveniles slowly develop into yellow eels, the sexually immature adults that are actually yellow-greenish to olive-brown.

The eels we find in Walkers Pond came there via the pump that brings Bay water into the pond. Creatures as small as the elvers would have no problems swimming through the pipe. I can’t help but wonder if their homing mechanism is trying to bring them to the marshy cove our pond once was.