Citizens' eel petition spurs government review

By Maureen Kelly

WHEN DEAD EELS began washing out of the Benton Falls hydroelectric dam on Maine's Sebasticook River last October, Doug Watts felt he was witnessing a needless slaughter. He plucked some of the mangled carcasses out of the water and brought them to the doorsteps of state environmental agencies as evidence that a fish kill was occurring, but state officials said they had no authority to force the dam operator to provide safe passage for the snakelike fish. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which licenses the facility, also declined to act.

It was a disappointing episode for Watts, president of the Friends of Kennebec Salmon, and his brother Tim, who have been spurring regulatory agencies to protect the American eel, whose numbers appear to be declining across the Eastern Seaboard. The brothers, self-described “river rats” since childhood, have been drawing attention to the slithery creatures' plight for several years by documenting eel kills and problems the fish have accessing habitat.

Frustrated by the slow pace of progress toward gaining protection for the eel, after the Benton Falls incident, the brothers filed a citizens' petition requesting that the eel be listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). In July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) responded to their appeal with an announcement that the agencies will conduct a status review of the species to determine if it warrants federal protection. The review is expected to take one year.

The announcement follows the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's (ASMFC’s) March 2004 recommendation that the agencies consider listing the entire coast-wide eel stock under the U.S. ESA and designate the population in Canada's Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence River system as a Distinct Population Segment. There are indications of a steep decline over the past decade in the number of juvenile eels inhabiting the St. Lawrence. Dam mortality and barriers to migration will be among the factors that will be taken into account during the review.

Born in the Sargasso Sea, young eels ride the ocean currents to coastal rivers where they migrate upstream to live until they reach sexual maturity. When ready to spawn, female eels make a once in a lifetime migration back to the ocean during which time they fatten and their skin thickens.

When these silver eels get caught in turbines, their very toughness often condemns them to a slow and gruesome death, according to Watts, who described finding maimed eels half rotted, unable to swim, but still alive days after being struck. When eels encounter a barrier to their downstream passage, they also lose their one chance to reproduce.

“Every eel caught in a turbine is one that will never spawn,” Watts said.

Blocked streams can also cause problems for immature eels as they try to reach upstream habitat w here they would grow to adulthood. On the Weweantic River in southern Massachusetts, Tim Watts has watched elvers, youngsters only a few inches long, hindered by an old concrete dam in their path. The problem extends well beyond the Weweantic. The ASMFC estimates that along the coast from Maine to Connecticut, eels have lost 91 percent of their historic habitat.

Dams may be only one piece of the puzzle as to why eel stocks are declining across their range, which extends from southern Greenland to the north coast of South America and as far inland as the Mississippi River and Great Lakes drainages. Along with turbine mortality and habitat loss, the USFWS and NMFS identified commercial harvest, changes in oceanic conditions and inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms as the apparent main threats to eels in their response to the Watts' petition.

As eels are long-lived and fatty creatures, some fish advocates worry another threat may be toxins that bioaccumulate in the flesh and can potentially cause disease or reproductive problems. The Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, a citizens group in Maine, commissioned a study at Texas A&M University that analyzed the contaminant loads of five eels from the Sebasticook River. The findings showed high levels of PCBs and DDT, according to Ed Friedman of the Friends, who expressed concern that the toxins are passing to predators such as bald eagles and mink that feed on the remains of eels killed at dams.

Though there are still unknowns when it comes to understanding why eel numbers are falling, Doug Watts believes that there is no reason to avoid addressing the known causes of eel deaths.

To curb dam mortality, the Watts brothers and Friedman point to voluntary measures dam owners can take, such as installing eel excluder plates over turbines and deep gates that allow eels to safely pass along the bottom. This fix proved successful at a dam on the Cobbosseecontee Stream, a tributary of the Kennebec River. Shutting down turbines during peak migration hours is another option.

Doug Watts, who earlier advocated for listing the Atlantic salmon as endangered, sees a cautionary tale in the salmon's story. If people had acted thirty or forty years ago to protect the salmon when there were still viable numbers, the fish might not have gone into such serious decline, he believes.

Seeing the Kennebec River full of elvers early this summer gave him hope that this species will have a more promising future.

“There's time to fix this,” he said. “We still have a chance.”

© 2005 The Gulf of Maine Times