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Citizen complaint of the day: Dead eels in Dorchester

By adamg on Sat, 02/22/2020 - 9:58pm

A concerned citizen filed a 311 complaint about dead eels among the rocks by the Morrissey Boulevard drawbridge:

Was walking yesterday by the beach by Morrissey near the bridge / yacht club. There were at least 20 dead eels. Didn't know if there was some kind of water hazard.

The complaint includes a photo of some of the dead eels, in case you need to know what they look like.

Neighborhoods: 
Dorchester
Free tagging: 
Malibu Beach
Morrissey Boulevard
Wildlife
Eels
311


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Comments

By Ari O on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 12:00am.

Is full of eels.

By obfuscation on Mon, 02/24/2020 - 4:54pm.

n/t

By Damaged on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 7:58am.

they weren't licensed to eel

By Damaged on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 3:14pm.

maybe they had been feeling eel

By tachometer on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 8:24am.

Do you think the person manning the 311 account got a bit of a sniggle out of this report?

By Parkwayne on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 9:47am.

Well done.

By Larry Glick on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 9:15am.

Eel be seeing you!

By adamg on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 2:24pm.

I am a free eel!

By SwirlyGrrl on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 10:12am.

311 complaint about mob of loud noisy seagulls
311 closes both complaints ... no eels, no seagulls found.

By onelith on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 12:49pm.

They live in fresh water and spawn
in salt water, the opposite behavior from what most
people know as “migratory.”

By Saddlebrook7 on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 3:14pm.

catadromous, as opposed to anadromous ( /showoff )

By SamWack on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 10:16pm.

is that the opposite of migratory? It's a migration; the direction of the migration is irrelevant.

Usually the word refers to species or persons that migrate seasonally or periodically, so it wouldn't really apply in either case.

By Lmo on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 11:45pm.

Eels don’t live in salt water?

By SamWack on Mon, 02/24/2020 - 7:49am.

Eels are born in the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic. As elvers they swim into fresh water, often far inland, and live their lives there. When they are ready to reproduce, they swim back to the Sargasso Sea, do so, and die.

There are other fish that live in the sea that are called eels - Morays, sand eels, congers, etc. - but the most familiar eel, the freshwater eel, is catadromous, as described.

By Lmo on Mon, 02/24/2020 - 11:08am.

Well I’ll be darned. All the eels I have caught have been in salt or brackish water. Thank you for the info.

By SamWack on Mon, 02/24/2020 - 11:49am.

of these "freswater" eels only make it as far as brackish water before they settle down, and end up spending their lives in estuaries and salt marshes. Slackers. I imagine it's them you've been catching.

One more amazing detail about this peculiar lifecycle is that there are two species of freshwater eel that spawn in the Sargasso Sea, the American Eel and the European Eel. The American Eels go west, and the European Eels go east. Must be a hell of a traffic jam.

By Parkwayne on Mon, 02/24/2020 - 12:10pm.

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/21/604551231/in-maine-its-a-boom-year-when-i...

By Rob on Sun, 02/23/2020 - 9:11pm.

"There's dead eels under our drawbridge!"
[best Frank Nelson waiter voice]:"Oooh! Don't let the other neighborhoods hear you got dead eels, sir - Lower Mills and Charlestown will want them under their drawbridges, too!"