Nature's Corner

Nature’s Corner – Cornel Nature Elvers making a comeback?

The 1960’s were a great time to be a young lad living in Dyserth. We spent most of our spare time either in or very near the river, be it on a rope swing suspended from a tree branch over the stream or just about anywhere the older lads could climb to tie one up often using nails as steps to get up the trunk!

The Afon Ffyddion seemed to be full of Brown Trout that would dart away at lightning speed to some hidden spot under a tree root or large boulder. There were Minnows and Bullheads that we would catch with bare hands, looking back through rose tints it appeared they were hiding under almost every stone.

Some of the village lads were experts at “Tickling Trout” a practice that meant sometimes getting in up to one’s neck in water to reach under a large rock, gently feeling for a sheltering fish and rubbing its belly very gingerly, effectively putting the fish into a trance and allowing it to be grabbed and chucked onto the nearby bank. I can well remember seeing Dyserth lads Stuart Sweetman and Roy Gunther triumphantly carrying a few braces home for the table, not big fish but there’s nothing quite like freshly caught and cooked Brown Trout with bread and butter.

In lower Dyserth the stream up to the small waterfall/weir at Y Ddol also held migratory sea trout that could swim no further upstream. We would also encounter hundreds if not thousands of tiny Eels or Elvers that had swum frantically in from the sea and would congregate in the water again below the small waterfall, and along the stretch below the sewage treatment plant at Llewerllyd.

Having walked the Dyserth riverbanks regularly over the years, I haven’t seen a single Elver nor Eel in the Afon Ffyddion for a long time. The Eel population in the UK has fallen by 95% since the 1970’s and it appears no-one really knows why.

Theories abound such as a possible shift in the Jetstream causing the Gulf stream to have altered course somewhat, Global warming? Bacterial infections? Pollution? More modern flood defences and dams all hinder the progress of these tiny eels.

But for some hitherto unknown reason the Eel population is on the rise again just as mysteriously as it declined with 2022 seeing the greatest number of Elvers arriving in the country for decades; Good news.

The most amazing aspect of the Eel’s life cycle (to me anyway) is the fact that every single Eel in our rivers and indeed the sea, including Conger Eels which live in deeper saltwater locations in the UK; yes, each and every one is born in the Sargasso Sea, which is within the Bermuda Triangle off the East coast of North America. They are the only fish to travel from freshwater to saltwater to breed and are known as catadromous; Salmon and Sea Trout for example travel from the sea to breed in rivers and streams.

The young eels travel some 4000 miles to our rivers swimming upstream feeding and growing until the time comes to return to the Sargasso Sea to mate and subsequently breed. Once they have produced up to a million eggs each in depths of around 600700 metres, the adult Eels die.

The eggs rise and float on the surface whereby they hatch and as larvae then rely on the Gulf stream currents to send them to our shores. After about a year drifting, they are by now tiny “Glass eels” growing continually into Elvers as they make their way up rivers and streams. The returning adults are known as Silver Eels which can grow to 5ft in length weighing 20lbs in exceptional circumstances, but are more often between 1 and 3 lbs as they make their way to the Sargasso Sea to continue the cycle of life

......Dave Parry.