Troy Tuckey holds a small juvenile eel after its captures as part of a trapping… (Adrin Snider )
They don't receive the same attention as oysters and blue crabs, but American eels helped Chesapeake Bay watermen pay their mortgages.
Reviled for its snake-like appearance, the fish — yes, it is a fish — is prized in overseas sushi markets and locally as bait for cobia anglers. Yet the fishery declined dramatically the past two decades.
As a result, scientists for the first time are taking a hard look at eels. Environmentalists want to make it illegal to catch them. And another once robust fishery is in danger of folding.
"It ain't like it used to be," said Maurice Bosse, who operates George Robberecht's Seafood Inc. along the Potomac River.
Eels have mystified scientists for years. Opposite of salmon, they live most of their lives in fresh water and spawn in the ocean.
They are born in the Sargasso Sea, a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean east of the Bahamas. They metamorphose into what looks like a transparent worm as currents deposit them from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
Upon reaching fresh or brackish water, eels show shades of silver, brown, and black. Usually by age two, they turn yellow. They grow as long as five feet and reach sexual maturity between eight and 24 years old. Eels then migrate back to the Sargasso, turn silver, spawn, and die.
"Their life cycle just blows me away," said Laura Lee, a biologist with the Virginia Marine Resouces Commission.
The eel industry peaked in the 1979, when East Coast fishermen landed nearly 4 million pounds. Most of the catch — typically 63 percent, according to Troy Tuckey, a scientist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point — came from the bay watershed.
Harold Moore, owner of Capt. Harrell's Seafood in Poquoson, was a full-time waterman then. He used to catch hundreds of eels a day in steel cages that resemble crab pots.
"Back in the '80s it was a big thing," he said, adding that dozens of watermen supported their families by catching eels. Eels typically fetched a dollar a pound, double what summer flounder paid.
A decade later, the amount of eels caught by commercial fishermen fell 50 percent. The catch in recent years has hovered around 700,000 pounds — about the same amount Virginia watermen caught in the 1980s.
Scientists aren't sure what caused the decline, but they speculate it's due to shifting ocean currents, pollution, overfishing and loss of habitat.
"It's likely the combination of a lot of things," said Tuckey, who monitors Virginia's eel population.
A 2005 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission study found that eels are at or near historic low levels coastwide, but an independent panel declared the data insufficient.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2007 considered but decided against listing eels as an endangered species. In April, California-based Council for Endagered Species Act Reliability submitted a petition asking the service to reconsider.
The service is expected next month to either decline the petition or begin a a yearlong study.
Mention eels to someone in Virginia's seafood industry and Bosse, the Potomac distributer, is the first name to come up. Bosse says there are plenty of eels in the Chesapeake, but not enough watermen.
Those who remain catch crabs because there are more buyers and more opportunity to sell locally. For example, Bosse's son crabs in the Potomac and sells his catch in Maryland.
"My son is doing pretty good for himself," he said.
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Females can grow to be 5 feet long
Live mostly in fresh or brackish water, spawns in the ocean
Eaten raw as sushi, used as bait for cobia anglers
Eels live up to 25 years
Change colors: from transparent, to yellow, to silver