It’s elver season here, so we went to the mouth of Patten Stream last Wednesday (April 8) to see whether the Fyke nets were out during the ongoing viral pandemic. They were. Here’s one curving gracefully in the high tide currents, enticing the migrating baby eels into its collection funnel.

Elvers are baby American eels (Aguilla rostrate) that arrive in the United States by the hundreds of thousands in the spring. They’re also called glass eels because, at this stage, they’re transparent except for their eyes and spinal cords:

The elvers have drifted and swum from their birthplace in the the salty Sargasso Sea south of Bermuda and are now wriggling their way up American fresh water streams to the ponds and lakes where their parents grew up. But, first, they have to get by many predators, including humans. Around here, the most common way to capture them is with the Fyke nets (pronounced “fick nets”). Here’s the mouth of Patten Stream at low tide during a prior elver season:

These nets are large, fine-mesh funnel traps that end in a cylindrical , coned netting bag that makes it easier for the fry to enter than to exit.

The elver season here is usually about a month long and it’s highly regulated. This year’s season contains even more restrictions due to the corvid-19 virus pandemic — social distancing rules, personnel limits, etc. Most of the trapped elvers are air-shipped alive in special containers to Asia, especially China, where they’re raised to non-transparent adulthood and then sold as delicacies.

The pandemic has caused havoc with the transportation of the elvers to Asia and has resulted in significantly lower prices. The average price per pound paid here to fishermen by elver dealers early this season reportedly was $512.00; the average price for the 2018 season reportedly was $2,366.00.

Part of their high value is due to the creatures’ miraculous lifestyle. American Eels spend eight to 25 years growing up in brackish or fresh water, where they are a favored food for many predators, especially great blue herons and crested cormorants .

When they feel ready (no one seems to know how that happens), the adult eels swim down into the Atlantic Ocean and out to the Sargasso Sea, where they spawn and die. Their eggs become larva that drift into the Gulf Stream and transform into the little glass eels that migrate in the winter and spring back to the fresh or brackish waters in which their parents grew up. (Surry, Maine)

In the Right Place: Wriggling