Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

TILL SCHMIDT'S IN 1904 253sexually undeveloped—of only moderate size to traverse 3000or 4000 miles of an ocean full of foes, and to seek, especiallyto find, the only area which contains the requisite depth,temperature, and currents favouringthe procreation and thereturn home of their minute but parentless progeny.The conclusion is now clear that the Eels of Europe at anyrate have a spawning area in common ;the two Italian doctorswere wrong in supposing that Eels spawned in the Mediterranean.In such ocean depths certainly below, probably far below, theone hundred fathoms ^Une the generative organs of the Eelsdevelope, and in due though protracted time the femalesspawn. 2Their eggs float for a time ;the young, when hatched out,pass through a metamorphosis and are known in one stageas Leptocephalus brevirostris. This larval form, which is flatand transparent and has a very small head, drifts with the oceancurrents towards the coasts of Europe, where it passes through aseries of metamorphoses into the Elver or young Eel, which inMarch and April swims up EngUsh rivers. The fecundity ofthe Eel, were it not for the system of check and countercheckdevised by Nature, would in time become a danger ; for theovary of a female thirty-two inches in length has been estimatedto contain no fewer than 10,700,000 eggs^!But however legitimate or illegitimate their methods mayseem, all praise should be rendered to our ancient anglers.Especially so, when we call to mind that, as they possessednot running Unes, reels, gut, nor probably landing nets, theplaying of large fish must have required more delicate manipulationand the landing presented far greater difficulties than to us,armed as we are with all these and many other appliances.^J.Schmidt found the youngest known stages of Leptocephalus, the larvalstage of eels, to the west of the Azores, where the water is over 2000 fathomsdeep : they were one-third of an inch in length and so were probably not longhatched.2 It is believed that no Eels return to the rivers, and that they die not longafter procreation. " They commence the long journey, which ends in maturity,reproduction, and death." Presidential Address, British Association,Cardiff, 1920,* There is in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington an excellentcollection of specimens, illustrative of the development of the Eel.