Thanks for signing up for Ocean Conservancy emails.Įels have strong jaws and a series of small, sharp teeth (trust us, you do not want to be bitten by a big eel-check out this story of a run-in with a moray eel). Baby eels, called glass eels, are transparent and are sometimes harvested for food. Afterwards, the adults die, while the young baby eels drift on Atlantic currents back to Europe-a journey that can take two to three years. For example, the European eel travels over 3,000 mi (4,800 km) from rivers in Europe to the Sargasso Sea to mate. The longest eel ever recorded was a slender giant moray eel captured in 1927-it measured 12.9 ft (3.9 m) long, or about the height of an elephant!Īlthough most eel species primarily live in salt water, some eels travel between salt and freshwater environments to breed. There are more than 800 species of eel ranging in about 2 in (5 cm) to 13 ft (4 m) in length. iĪ true eel is an elongated finned-fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes. They may look similar, but electric eels and true eels are in completely different families. Not all animals we call “eels” are even technically eels. But today, we’re here to give these fanged-toothed, long-bodied creatures the attention they deserve by debunking a common eel myth.īelieve it or not, all eels are not created equal. It’s hard to compete with a fluffy otter or majestic whale when you are literally the villain in a Disney movie-I’m looking at you Flotsam and Jetsam. And that’s OK, we can’t blame you-they’re not exactly the more charismatic critters in the ocean. Newsweek reached out to Rockhold for comment, but it's not the only time that a fisherman (or an eel!) has made the news.Ī Maine fisherman caught a pregnant lobster, gave her two fish "for the road" and threw her back into the ocean, footage shows.Ī shrimp eel took beachgoers in Georgia by surprise when it washed ashore.Īnd a long-standing state record for the largest American eel caught in Missouri has been broken after 28 years.You may not think about eels very much. Females can lay up to 10,000 eggs in their dens, where both the male and female care and guard them for four-to-five months while they hatch and mature. The Seattle Aquarium says that juvenile wolf eels spend their early lives in the open water: "Once they mature and find a mate, they select a den and typically spend the rest of their lives living in it." Imagine a snake slithering on the ground. While at sea, wolf eels live in water as deep as 740 feet–where they swim in deep S-shapes. Reid added that the creature is almost enamored with not being seen, with aquarium visitors getting good views typically during afternoon feedings. It may be a vicious-looking eel, but it totally has the opposite temperament." "Their jaws are very strong and if you got your finger in there you'd regret it. "They've got faces only a mother could love," said Scott Reid, who cares for wolf eels at Monterey Bay Aquarium. However, the aquarium said wolf eels are not usually targeted by fishermen–such as the ones who carefully placed the eels back in the water in the aforementioned TikTok videos. New Hampshire Man Catches Record-Breaking 12lb Fish, Almost 3ft Long.Diver Gets Mouth Cleaned by Fish in Deep, Deadly Blue Hole.Kolohe the Hawaiian Monk Seal Dies from Parasitic Disease Spread by Cats."Every time I question whether my fear of the ocean is irrational, something like this reminds me that it's not," another user said. "You are showing me something I've literally never seen in 35 years," one user told Rockhold. TikTokers, a few of whom admitted they had never seen wolf eels prior to the video, were quite smitten with these creatures. When asked if the wolf eels enjoy eating crab, he humorously replied, "It's like an underwater crab buffet." Rockhold, in a comment under one of his videos, said even he "was kind of tripping" when he saw the eels in the traps. "That thing is so ugly."Īdditional videos apparently posted on the same day include two other wolf eels caught in traps. "Dude, are you kidding me?" said one fisherman overheard in the background. Rockhold said a big fishbone vertebra is in the eel's mouth when it was brought to the surface. The video, posted on TikTok April 14 by professional surfer and commercial fisherman Matt Rockhold, features a gray-colored creature known as a wolf eel that got caught in a crap trap during a fishing expedition in Monterey Bay. A video of wolf eels being caught in crab traps has captivated the internet to the tune of 64 million views and counting.
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