Return of the River Eels – Thanks to Fourth-Graders Fixing What Grownups Broke

By Jim Pfiffer

American eels used to be as common in our rivers as ducks, minnows, and missing fishing lures.

Then we humans started messing around. We polluted. We overfished. We logged. We built dams. We congratulated ourselves.

And just like that, the eels disappeared.

Now, thanks to a new program, school kids near the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers, upstream from you folks, are raising young American eels in classroom aquariums to release them into the rivers in May.

American eels are born in the ocean and live most of their lives in freshwater, which means at some point they have to go back downstream. Unfortunately, we built dams, and it turns out dams are not especially eel-friendly.

Fast-forward to today, when decades of environmental damage are being addressed by fourth graders at the Finn Academy Charter School in Elmira and students at schools in Waverly, NY. And Athens, Pa.  

Makes sense. If you want something fixed, ask kids. Adults already tried and, clearly, blew it.

The Eels in the Classroom program began in 2018 with just two classrooms. Today, it involves more than 70 classrooms – from pre-K through high school – in 45 school districts across New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission runs the project, and the plan is beautifully simple: capture young eels, called elvers, at the base of dams, load them into trucks, and move them upstream, completely bypassing the barriers we put in their way. 

American eels are fish and are catadromous, meaning they spend most of their lives in freshwater before returning to the ocean to spawn. They’re born in the Sargasso Sea, a mysterious swirling patch of the Atlantic near Bermuda. As babies, they drift for months on ocean currents, looking like clear noodles, called glass eels, until they reach the coast and start swimming inland and heading up rivers and streams.

Once they are stocked in the rivers, the eels will quietly settle in for the next 20 or 30 years. Most are 2-3 feet long, but females can grow to 4 feet. They live under river logs and stones, coming out at night to eat insects, crawfish, small fish and anything else that’s slow or not paying attention.

Don’t worry, they don’t bite, sting, shock or harm humans. 

Eventually, one day, the restocked eels will stop and think, You know what? I’m outta here.

And off it will go, no map, no GPS, no asking for directions at gas stations, back to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce and die. Mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, I get lost trying to find the bathroom.

Eels matter because they’re part of a healthy working river. American river mussels rely on eels to reproduce. Mussel larvae hitch rides on eels and spread through the river like tiny freeloaders with a purpose. One mussel filters up to 15 gallons of water a day. A large mussel bed in a river can filter millions of gallons of water a day.

The math is simple. No eels means fewer mussels. Fewer mussels mean dirtier water. Dirtier water means algae, slime, and conversations that start with, “Remember when you could swim in that?”

The eels provide food for us, too – fried, baked, or in sushi. 

There is hope for the project. Dams are slowly being removed. Eel ladders – basically stairways for fish without legs – are being installed, while the kids are raising a new generation.

When access is restored, eels return. They remember the way.

The students are learning something previous generations either forgot or ignored: you can’t abuse a river forever and expect it to keep smiling back.

The American eel has been here for thousands of years. It belongs here.

The eels aren’t returning because we adults suddenly got smarter. They’re coming back because kids care enough to help.

When they release the eels, it won’t just be a stocking. It will be an apology.
And a promise. And maybe proof that if we let kids lead, the rest of us might finally follow.

The eels will spend the next two decades quietly improving the river. The rest of us should try to keep up.

So, the next time you stand on a bridge over the rivers or stand near the bay and look down at the water, remember this:

That river once carried a fish born in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
A bunch of kids brought it back.

Get more of Jim Pfiffer’s columns at his “Full of Wit” blog https://fullofwitblog.wordpress.com/. Learn more about illustrator Filomena Jack at www.FilomenaJackStudio.com.