2024 01 Spring with bleed V4 - Flipbook - Page 27
and in some cases into ponds in Kings Nympton! As the end of their life
cycle nears, they return to the Sargasso Sea4an incredible feat of
navigation! There they spawn and die, and the cycle begins again. Venn
Farm/Tangled Bank is 30 miles from the sea following the rivers Taw and
Mole. The final stretch4along the tributaries from Lenton Farm4 involves
climbing 450 feet in just 2 miles! In light of that extraordinary journey, we
put the live eel that we found on the lawn at Venn Farm into the pond,
hoping that would be its home until time came to retrace its transatlantic
odyssey. There it would feed up on fish and other pond life, occasionally
foraging on dry land for snails and slugs. But it seems a stoat made a tasty
meal of it! They have also been seen at neighbouring East Hele and on our
local rivers. But the number arriving in Europe has declined by 95% in the
last 40 years. So we have to count ourselves lucky to have found one at all!
Barriers on the rivers and streams can be a problem for our eels and so in
some places, ropes have been positioned that enable the eels to navigate
the difficult areas. Hopefully with measures like these in place, the eel
population will start to increase again.
Tangled
Bank
Become tiny `glass
eels’ as they reach
Europe.
The `Tangled Bank9 eel
Darken and become
elvers as they migrate
inland.
They mature into
yellow eels.
After 20 (and up to
50) years silver eels
migrate back to the
sargasso to spawn
and die.
To read online—www.kingsnymptononline.com/latest-edition
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