What does a sea eel eat. Sea eel. Characteristics of behavior

river eel considered a delicacy. Especially smoked. However, in some areas it is not eaten because it resembles a snake in appearance.

Yes, indeed, the river eel looks unappetizing, so few dare to approach what wriggles in the water, and even pick it up. But in vain. After all, this fish has a valuable composition, which includes fat and proteins, vitamins and minerals.

Appearance

The long, narrow body, compressed at the back towards the tail, really gives the eel a resemblance to a snake. Like all fish, it is covered with mucus, and therefore rather slippery, it is not so easy to hold it in your hands. The eel has fins: pectoral, dorsal, caudal and anal. Moreover, the last three are connected into one and stretch along the entire length of his back. Also, its feature is a flattened head, which outwardly almost cannot be distinguished from the body. On both sides of the mouth are small eyes, inside it are tiny sharp teeth, which greatly help this predator to hunt. River eel happens different color. It depends on the reservoir in which he lives, as well as on the degree of his sexual maturity. Juveniles are dark green or dark brown with a black back, yellow sides and a white belly. Adults are much darker. The back is black or dark brown, the sides are grayish-white, the belly is white. River eel acquires a metallic sheen with age.

Where does he live

Its habitat is wide. It can be found in almost all water bodies of the European part of Russia. In addition, he resides in pools Baltic Sea, sometimes Azov, Black, White and Barents. In Ukraine, river eel chooses the Danube, Southern Bug, the Danube basin. This river dweller does not require any special conditions for its habitat. Maybe that's why some of its individuals manage to reach the age of twenty-five. On average, their life expectancy is 9-15 years. How does acne conduct them?

Varieties and lifestyle of fish

Being under water for such a long time must be boring. But not for fish. After all, they are constantly busy obtaining food. What does river eel eat? Being a predator, he eats fish, newts, frogs, larvae, snails, crustaceans, worms. He hunts in the dark. Moreover, it is not his sight that serves as an assistant, but an excellent sense of smell. With its help, river eel can smell prey at a distance of up to 10 meters. Eels are active only in warm water. Lowering its temperature to 9-11 degrees is a signal for them that it is time to fall into suspended animation. In this state, they remain until spring, until warming comes again.

In times of danger, these fish burrow into the muddy bottom, so they avoid rocky surfaces. During the day they hide between snags, in thickets and other shelters, and at night they can come close to the shore. If the reservoir dries up, then they can for a long time live in wet soil. Sometimes eels move on land, the condition for this possibility is wet grass or soil.

strange appearance

In Aristotle's time, people couldn't explain where acne came from. No one managed to catch an eel with caviar or milk or see its fry. Therefore, its origin was shrouded in mystery. In their conclusions, people have reached the point that they considered the eel a product of silt. Others have explained this phenomenon by saying that it comes from other fish or even worms. But in our time, it is known that eels swim away to spawn in the Atlantic Ocean in a place where a lot After the eggs are laid, usually in April or May, these fish die. Transparent, flat larvae are born at the end of winter. In this way, the eel spends three years. All this time he drifts off the coast of America or Western Europe. After it acquires its usual appearance, the eel goes to a permanent residence in fresh water. There are several varieties of this fish with their habits and characteristics.

dangerous acquaintance

In addition to the completely harmless European or common eel, its electric counterpart lives in nature. Although they look similar in appearance, they are not related. while hunting, it kills small fish, releasing a current charge, the strength of which reaches 600 V. This can be enough to kill even a person. Such an eel In length, it reaches 1.5 meters, and weighs 40 kilograms. In addition to hunting, with the help of an electric charge, the eel is protected from enemies. The radius of its influence is 3 meters. Divers should stay away from this fish because it attacks without warning. Her habitat was

Big and beautiful

This fish has a relative in Atlantic Ocean. This is the structure of his body, he is very similar to his brother and has the same elongated torso and flattened head. However, the size is much larger than the river eel. It also differs in color. Several species of conger eel live in the ocean. Its skin is colored gray or brown, but there are spotted or striped individuals. This fish is delicious, fishermen are happy to catch it. It is especially pleasing that the trophy is of considerable size.

plant or not

The original among its relatives is the spotted garden eel. It is named so because of its coloration, and also because these fish “stand” all their lives, half leaning out of the water. Such a flock resembles a garden. When danger appears, they dive into their sandy holes, and then stick out back. They swing in the water column for a reason. Disguising themselves as plant stems, these fish wait for their prey, and then deftly grab it with their large mouth. For food they eat crustaceans, mollusks, small fish. This type of eel is found in the Red Sea, off Madagascar, near East Africa.

Expensive and tasty

The Japanese river eel differs from the common eel in that it can live both in fresh water and in the sea. And at night even gets out on land. Its habitat is Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Philippines. This eel glows in the dark and eats insects, fish and crustaceans. It is used for cooking and also in Chinese traditional medicine. In Japanese cuisine, this fish is the most expensive, so it is caught in very large quantities, and it is even under the special supervision of Greenpeace.

Don't be afraid appearance this fish. It has nothing to do with snakes. So feel free to try this delicacy.

For a long time we did not know the main thing about the eel: how, when and where it produces offspring. For a long time, people, when cutting fish when cooking, got used to finding caviar or milk in it at the right time of the year. But for the eel, that proper time didn't seem to exist at all.

river eel or European eel(Anguilla anguilla) is a species of predatory catadromous fish from the eel family. In 2008, it was included in the IUCN Red List as a species "critically endangered". It has a long wriggling body with a brownish-greenish back, with yellowness on the sides and abdominal part. The skin is very slippery and the scales are small. It feeds on insect larvae, molluscs, frogs, small fish. Reaches two meters in length and weighs 4 kg.

No one could say with certainty that he had seen the eggs of an eel, and about a thousand years ago Aristotle summed up the folk experience, stating that "the eel has no sex, but the depths of the sea give rise to it."

A little later, they found out that eels can live quite a long time without water, but only if they are surrounded by a humid environment. From here came the stories that eels come out of the rivers at night. Such a phenomenon cannot be considered impossible just because the eel is a fish. Of course, he will not encroach on peas or steal young lentils, since he does not eat plant food, but it can prey on insects or earthworms.

But if eel walks did not give rise to much controversy, since the idea was simply agreed upon, things were different with questions of reproduction. There existed real secret. And each author developed his own theory. Konrad Gesner, writing in 1558, still tried to keep an open mind, saying that all who studied the topic of their origin and reproduction held three different points of view.

According to one, eels are born in mud or moisture. Apparently, Dr. Gesner did not regard this idea very highly.

According to another theory, eels rub against the ground with their belly, and the mucus from their bodies fertilizes the silt and soil, and they give birth to new eels not male and not female, since eels are said to have no sex differences.

A third opinion was that eels reproduced by spawning like all other fish.

A little later, zoologists acted very logically: they dissected eels in the hope of finding, if not caviar and milk, then at least organs capable of isolating them in due time. And they found what they were looking for. At the same time, the fishermen provided additional and seemingly quite simple proof.

Every year in the autumn they noticed that many adult eels go down the rivers and disappear into the open sea. And in the spring, huge schools of small, several centimeters long, eels enter the rivers and slowly make their way upstream.

These eels are transparent, which is why they are called “glass eels” on the coast of the European continent. So about 150 years ago, scientists decided that the dispute was over. The eel has been recognized as a freshwater fish that spawns in the sea. This is what the question looked like in the middle of the 20th century. But the researchers had no idea what surprises awaited them in the near future.

In 1851, the naturalist Kaul caught a very interesting sea fish. She was curious above all for her appearance. If you put a few of these fish in a salt water aquarium, then, at first glance, the aquarium will seem empty. Looking closer, you can see several pairs of tiny black eyes that float "by themselves".

A long observation will help you to see the watery shadows: they trail behind the eyes like tails. Pulled out of the water, this fish looks like a laurel leaf, only big. A kind of bay leaf made of flexible glass, thin, transparent and fragile. The fish can be placed on a newspaper or book and print can be easily read through it.

Dr. Kaul began to study the literature in search of a description of this fish and, finding nothing, described it himself. According to the scientific tradition, he picked up her name: leptocephalus brevirostris. That seemed to be the end of it all.

However, two Italian ichthyologists, Grass and Calandruccio, read Kaup's description and decided to study Leptocephalus further. At first it was a routine: they caught fish near Messina, prepared an aquarium and planted several leptocephaluses there. The fish ate, swam in circles and looked - at least those parts of them that were visible - quite healthy.

But they got smaller! The largest of the leptocephaluses was 75 mm long when caught. While he was being watched, he became as much as 10 mm shorter. In addition, he lost weight and lost his leaf-like shape. And then, quite unexpectedly, he turned into a young "glass" eel!

Recovering from their astonishment, Grassi and Calandruccio announced that the leptocephalus discovered by Kaul was nothing more than an eel in the larval stage or a fry of an adult eel. River and lake eels immediately began to be considered teenagers who, having matured, again returned to the sea. The adult eel, the Italians concluded, lays eggs on the bottom of the sea and probably dies, since no one has ever seen one. large blackheads entered from the sea at the mouth of the rivers and sailed upstream.

Transparent young "glass" eels

The eggs hatch into fry, which Dr. Kaul mistook for a leptocephalus. They remain in the bottom layers of the water until either they do not turn into, or are preparing to turn into a young eel. Then the young eels swim all the way into the less saline waters until they finally enter the rivers.

Grass and Calandruccio explained why leptocephalus is so rare. Because it sits at the bottom of the sea. They were just lucky, and they got the larvae from the Strait of Messina, where the currents often bring the inhabitants of the deep to the surface. If you make Leptocephalus more or less visible by placing it on a sheet of black paper, you will notice that its body consists of many segments.

Scientifically, these segments, similar to chain links, are called mayomers. The Italians thought that the number of segments could correspond to the number of vertebrae in an adult eel. And they proved that this is so: if you have the patience to count the number of segments in a fry, you can tell how many vertebrae an adult will have.

All this was great, but the story is not over yet!

Another year, another sea, another scientist. In 1904, in the Atlantic, between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, the Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt, working for the Royal Fisheries Ministry, was on board the small Danish steamer Thor. Throwing a net from the side, Schmidt caught one transparent "laurel leaf", so famous by Italian scientists.

In length, he could compete with the largest specimens from Messina. Dr. Schmidt felt a pleasant excitement: for some unknown, but probably amusing reason, the leptocephalus was near the surface of the water. But later, the same transparent fish began to be caught in other parts of the Atlantic.
On sea ​​map Western Europe is visible line, where the depth is three thousand feet.

Sailors call it "the 500 fathom line". To the west of it - the abyss of the Atlantic, to the east - shallow seas that flooded part of the continental land. Schmidt noted that approximately in the region of this line at the end of summer, 75-mm leptocephaluses accumulate when their transformations, described by Grassi and Calandruccio, begin.

By the next spring, they become young eels and come to the mouths of European rivers. After trial and error, Schmidt realized that the place where the eels started their journey from was most likely the Sargasso Sea.

The Sargasso Sea, undeservedly known as a graveyard of lost ships that lose their way in a floating ball of thick rotting algae, is actually an area of ​​the Atlantic Ocean where a special kind of algae grows in the warm waters of the southern latitudes.

Having an oval shape, the sea stretches from north to south for about a thousand miles and two thousand from west to east. It rotates slowly around its axis, as it is constantly pushed by ocean currents and especially the Gulf Stream. The center of this revolving sea lies a few hundred miles southeast of Bermuda, and the islands themselves are located on the edge Sargasso Sea. How close to the edge depends on the time of year as the amount of algae varies.

The expedition, which was to trace the path of the eel to its actual spawning ground, set sail in 1913 on the small schooner Margarita. Schmidt and his assistants noticed that the farther along the Gulf Stream they moved, the smaller the leptocephaluses became. The spawning ground was in the area of ​​the Sargasso Sea - this expedition established exactly. Alas, after only six months of work, "Margarita" was thrown ashore in the West Indies. And then the world war began.

In 1920, Schmidt returned to work - on the four-masted motor schooner "Dana" (remember this name!). And I found out that the European eels that leave the rivers of Europe in autumn seem to move with a constant high speed and get into the Sargasso Sea for Christmas and New Year. Where they spawn is still not exactly known: it is not found in the algae floating on the surface, although they are overgrown with caviar of other fish.

She doesn't seem to be seabed because the ocean under the Sargasso Sea is very deep. During the first summer they grow up to 25 mm, during the second this length doubles, and during the third it reaches 75. After the transformation, they enter fresh water and go up the rivers. In the three years leading up to the transformation, they move about a thousand miles a year, "rolling" most of the time in the currents of the Gulf Stream.

American eels also spawn under the Sargasso Sea, but in a slightly different area. Their spawning ground is closer to the shores of America. The American eel also travels a thousand miles a year, but grows to a length of three inches in one year. He does not need more time for this, because he is much closer to the mouth of the rivers, in which he spends most of his life.

Do young eels go astray? So far, nothing like this has been seen! The mystery of migration has not yet been solved. But let's talk about another mystery.

After sailing in the Sargasso Sea, the ship "Dana" participated in another expedition, around the world. It took place in 1928-1930. The collection collected by the expedition is now in the marine biology laboratory in Charlottenlund. There is a leptocephalus in the collection, caught at a depth of about a thousand feet near extreme point Africa, 35 degrees 42 minutes south latitude and 18 degrees 37 minutes east longitude.

This leptocephalus has a length of... 184 cm! An adult eel of this species is unknown to anyone ... If it grows in the same proportions as an ordinary eel, then a monster is obtained ... more than 20 m long. We will not say that this is the famous giant sea serpent, but let's all let us ask ourselves the question: what would have grown out of him if he had remained free?

However, the American researcher William Beebe in 1934, diving in a bathysphere off Bermuda to a depth of 923 m, noticed that such leptocephals swim in pairs. Therefore, it is likely that some deep-sea leptocephalians are neotenic larvae, i.e. can reproduce without undergoing metamorphosis and throughout life without turning into an adult form.

Giant leptocephalians are still found today

Common or European eel (lat. Anguilla anguilla)- kind of carnivore freshwater fish from the river eel family.

It has a long wriggling body with a brownish-greenish back, with yellowness on the sides and abdominal part. It lives in the waters of the Baltic Sea basin, in much smaller numbers - in the rivers and lakes of the Azov, Black, White basins, Barents Seas. It is found in many reservoirs of the European part of Russia. At first glance, this wonderful fish resembles a snake, and therefore in many places we do not even consider it a fish and are not eaten. The long body of the eel is almost perfectly cylindrical, only the tail is slightly laterally compressed, especially towards the end.

His head is small, slightly flattened in front, with a more or less long and wide nose, as a result of which other zoologists distinguish several types of eels; both jaws, of which the lower one is slightly longer than the upper one, are seated (also the arthropod) with small, sharp teeth; the yellowish-silvery eyes are very small, the gill openings are very narrow and moved a considerable distance from the occiput, as a result of which the gill covers do not completely cover the gill cavity. The dorsal and anal fins are very long and, together with the caudal fin, merge into one inseparable fin, bordering the entire rear half of the body in a circle. The soft rays of the fins are generally covered with rather thick skin and, as a result, are hardly distinguishable. At first glance, the eel seems to be naked, but if you remove the thick layer of mucus that covers it, it turns out that its body is seated with small, delicate, very oblong scales, which, however, for the most part do not touch and are generally located very irregularly. The color of the eel varies considerably - and sometimes dark green, sometimes bluish-black; the belly, however, is always yellowish-white or bluish-gray.

The real location of the eel is the rivers of the Baltic, Mediterranean and German seas. We have this fish in in large numbers only in southwestern Finland, in St. Petersburg, Baltic, and some northwestern provinces. (even, according to my information, in Smolensk Gubernia, namely in the Belaya River, a tributary of the Western Dvina) and in Poland. In addition to rivers, the eel lives in many large lakes - Ladoga, Onega and Peipsi, from which it enters the shallow Pskov Lake. In Ilmen, however, it is not. From the waters of the Baltic Basin, the eel probably penetrated through canals into the rivers of the Black and Caspian Seas in this century, but it is still very rare here. Only single specimens occasionally reach the Volga, as prof. Kessler from fishermen in Vyshny Volochek, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl and Yuryevets, but they do not breed in it; they are probably often confused here with river lampreys. According to O. A. Grimm, eels sometimes reach Saratov, but in any case they are very a rare event and hardly reach the Caspian Sea. Only in some rivers flowing into the upper Volga, eels come across quite often, namely in Tvertsa, where they probably got from Lake. Mstino, but Lately they disappeared from this river as well.

In the same way, only individual, so to speak, lost individuals are occasionally seen in the Dnieper, Dniester and Danube, but, apparently, from ancient times, since even Guldenshtedt (in the last century) says that the eel is located in the river. Ostra (in the left tributary of the Desna), near Nizhyn. Probably, it got into the Dnieper basin from the Neman through the Pinsk swamps, and indeed the upper reaches of the Black Sea and Baltic basins are close to each other and, moreover, are connected by canals. Kyiv fishermen sometimes find eels in the stomach of large catfish and believe that they must be found not far from Kyiv - in the Dnieper or Pripyat; Mogilev fishermen also claimed prof. Kessler that the eel comes across occasionally in the Dniester. Finally, in the seventies, K.K. Pengo was delivered an eel, already caught in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov near the Petrovsky village. As for the presence of eels in the Danube, in the spring of 1890, the fishermen's society in Galati sent over half a million young eels from Altona in Schleswig, which were released into the Danube, on the Romanian coast. In all likelihood, eels are quite acclimatized here and will breed (in the sea).

“River eel,” says Prof. Kessler, is not a completely freshwater fish, but rather an anadromous fish, since it does not spend its entire life in fresh waters, but periodically leaves them for the sea. However, there is an important difference between the eel and other anadromous fish. The fact is that all other anadromous fish, as far as we know, grow up in the sea and rise from there up the rivers to throw eggs, while the eel, on the contrary, keeps in fresh water at a young age and then goes down the rivers to spawn. sea. When the eel wanders along the rivers, neither rapids nor waterfalls can stop him; for example, the high Narva waterfall, which serves as an insurmountable barrier for salmon, does not at all constitute a similar barrier for eels. It is not known, however, with accuracy how the eel gets over the steep waterfalls it meets, like the Narva one, especially since it cannot make high jumps. In all likelihood, he bypasses them, crawling over wet coastal rocks; at least it is true that he knows how to crawl very dexterously on wet ground and can live out of water for up to half a day or more. The reason for the survivability of the eel out of water is that the gill leaves, due to the elongated shape of the gill cavity and the narrowness of the gill openings, remain moist for a very long time, capable of supporting the process of respiration.

The eel preferentially adheres to waters with clay or muddy soil and, on the contrary, avoids rivers and lakes, which have a sandy or rocky bottom, if possible. In particular, he likes to rotate between sedge and reeds in summer. So, for example, a very significant eel fishing is carried out along the southern coast of the Kronstadt Bay, in those reeds that humiliate the coast near the Sergius Monastery, and beyond Oranienbaum. Here, fishermen distinguish two varieties of it - running eel and herbalist (sedentary). Fishermen lay clearings or paths in the reeds, on which they set up fences for eels. It should be noted, however, that the eel is in motion only at night, while during the day it remains at rest - “lies in the mud, curled up like a rope,” in the words of our fishermen. In the same way, in winter, at least in our northern side, the eel remains motionless and burrows into the mud, according to Ekshtrem, to a depth of 46 cm.

The eel is a carnivorous fish, it feeds on both other fish and their caviar, and various small animals living in mud, crustaceans, worms, larvae, snails (Lumnaeus). Of the fish most often given to him as prey are those that, like him, rotate more along the bottom of the reservoir, such as sculpins and lampreys; but, by the way, he also seizes any other fish that he can catch, and therefore often falls on the hooks of the lines baited by the fishermen. I once happened to find in the stomach of a large eel the remains of a small chub, along with a hook, on which, probably, the fish was impaled, when the eel grabbed it and swallowed it. In spring and early summer, when almost everyone carp fish they spawn, the eel preferentially feeds on this caviar and exterminates a huge number. By the end of summer and autumn in the Kronstadt Bay, its main food is crustaceans, sharp-tailed idothea (Idothea entomon), which are known to fishermen as sea cockroaches. A very remarkable property of the eel is that, when caught and planted in a tight cage, it vomits out of the stomach a significant part of the food that has not yet had time to be digested, especially if the stomach is tightly stuffed with it. So, for example, he sometimes vomits whole snails, crustaceans, lampreys through his mouth. There is almost no way to hold a caught eel in your hands, as it is slippery, strong and dodgy. If you put it on the ground, then it moves along it quite quickly, forward or backward, depending on the need, and bends the body completely snake-like. It is quite difficult to kill an eel: the most terrible wounds are often not fatal for him. Only if you break his spinal column, then he dies relatively soon. In addition, muscle contractility is preserved for a very long time even in cut pieces of eel. I happened to observe the right moves mandible, alternating opening and closing of the mouth in the cut off head of an eel for more than a quarter of an hour. The clerk of a fish farm in St. Petersburg assured me that the most the right way to quickly kill an eel is to immerse it in salt water, but experience did not justify this assurance; the eel, which I placed in a strong saline solution, remained alive for more than two hours.

Some interesting information about the eel from Russian authors are given by Terletsky, who observed it in the basin of the Western Dvina. According to him, the eel lives here in many lakes, from which, along rivers, streams, even overland, it passes into big rivers and rolls down to spawn in the sea. Its course begins in May and continues all summer. During this time, he does not have a permanent home, but migrates from place to place. Idle eels, that is, those that do not breed this year, do not leave the lakes in which they live, and although they travel in rivers, but only for a certain distance. In ordinary water levels, the eel adheres to places deep, quiet, with a muddy, grassy or sandy bottom. With a high rise in water, it often occurs in coastal whirlpools, in which it crawls and digs even during the day. For the most part, it searches for food at night at the bottom, and during the day it digs into the silt, crawls under the roots of coastal trees, under stones, etc. greater distance. He kept eels in a special pool, on a stream, and from here carried them to a fairly considerable distance, even half a verst, and gave them freedom. “Experiments were made at dawn, in the evening and at night, on moist soil. Immediately, the eels, bending ring-shaped like snakes, crawled quite freely and quite quickly, at first in different directions, but then soon turned towards the river and headed towards it in a more or less direct direction. They changed their path only when they encountered sand or bare earth, which they diligently avoided. Once on the square, sloping towards the river, they intensified to speed up their pace and, apparently, were in a hurry to get to their native element as soon as possible. Two, three or even more hours eel can freely stay out of the water on a warm day. It can stagger on land from evening until sunrise, especially if the night is dewy.

Until recently, the reproduction of eels has remained very obscure, and even to this day it has not yet been fully investigated, which, of course, depends on the fact that the eel goes to sea for this purpose. (Danish ichthyologist Schmidt in the 20s of this century and others researchers have precisely established where, how and when eel spawning occurs.) ordinary conditions the eel grows rather slowly, not earlier than in the fifth or sixth year of life it reaches a length of 107 cm, but, however, continues to grow for a very long time, so that sometimes there are individuals that are up to 180 cm long and are thicker than a human arm. According to Kessler's observations, an eel, which is 47 cm long, weighs about 800 g, and an eel 98 cm long weighs about 1.5 kg; in addition, there are indications that an eel 122 cm tall weighs from 3 to 4 kg, and therefore it must be assumed that the largest eels should weigh at least 8 kg.

Sea eel- fish of the eel family. Latin name this fish Conger conger. There is also a second name for the sea eel - conger.

Types of acne

The numerous family of conger eels is represented by more than 180 species that are found exclusively in sea and ocean waters. Lightly salted and fresh water unsuitable for their habitat. Differences between representatives of all species are very minor and relate mostly to the habitat of eels.

Sea eel - description. What does an eel look like?

A person who sees an eel for the first time may confuse it with a ribbon sea snake, which is very poisonous. This is quite understandable due to the long cigar-shaped body and three fins fused into one (dorsal, caudal and anal fins). The small head of an eel with large oval eyes and a wide mouth complete the resemblance between an eel and a snake. The outer teeth of the eel, which form the cutting edge, are well developed. Gill openings, shaped like slits, reach the abdominal part. Visible immediately behind them pectoral fins. Completely devoid of scales, the skin of the eel is abundantly covered with a layer of mucus secreted by special glands.

What color is acne?

The color of eels does not differ in particular variety and is dictated by the need for camouflage during hunting. Therefore, most often conger eels are painted in various shades of gray, black, brownish or greenish. Sometimes there are specimens with contrasting spotted coloring. Sea eels are much larger than their freshwater relatives and can reach a length of up to 3 m and weigh up to 100 kg.

Eel - habitation

The distribution area of ​​conger eels is quite wide and includes warm waters Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as adjacent seas. Some types of conger eels tolerate colder waters better and can be found in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. In the Northern, Baltic and Black Sea sea ​​eel fish swim quite rarely. These fish are inhabitants of both the coastal zone and the open sea, not sinking deeper than 500 m.

What does an eel eat?

Eels lead night image life and during the day they prefer to sleep in a secluded place. They are voracious predators by nature. powerful teeth. The basis of the diet is small fish, crustaceans and molluscs. They will not miss the catch entangled in fishing nets. Not possessing good eyesight, eel fish prefer to lie in wait for prey in ambush, because thanks to their excellent sense of smell, they feel it from afar. There are types of eels that disguise themselves as bottom vegetation. A vertical hole in the ground with the help of a strong tail and leaning halfway out of it, conger eels are waiting for prey. In case of danger, they immediately hide in the hole completely.

Eel is a whole family of fish, which includes several genera and dozens of species of their representatives. Each species is used by humans for food, but for the angler, the river eel is of great interest, a photo of which you can study below. Currently, a huge part of these fish are on the verge of extinction.

Varieties and appearance

There are several types of acne. But the most common are:

• Electric eel. This fish is also known as lightning eel. This is due to the ability to produce electrical energy. You can see this type of eel in the first photo. The maximum length that a fish can reach is 3 meters, while the mass can reach up to 40 kilograms;
• Sea eel, whose photo is located under the photo of electric eel. This fish can reach 3 meters in length, and its weight can be about 100 kilograms;
• River eel. This fish is also known as the European eel. Her photo is located third in a row. In length, it reaches a maximum of 1 meter, and in weight - 6 kilograms. But a case of catching a trophy individual weighing more than 12 kilograms was recorded.

In electric eel, the body is not covered with scales, it is elongated, narrowed from the sides and from the back, and rounded in front. Adults are olive brown, with the underside of the head a bright orange. The fish has emerald green eyes and a light edge of the anal fin. Lightning eel is interesting for organs that generate electricity and occupy up to 66% of the length of the entire body. With their help, an electric discharge is generated with a force of up to 1 Ampere and a voltage of up to 1300 V.

The sea eel has a long and serpentine body that is not covered in scales at all. Its head is somewhat flattened, at the end of the fish there is a mouth, which is distinguished by thick lips. The color of the body can be brown or dark gray, and the belly is usually painted in a golden or light brown hue. anal and dorsal painted in light brown, but they have a black border, which is very clearly visible in the photo. The lateral line of the fish has white pores.

The European eel has an elongated body, slightly laterally compressed. The body is covered with very small, almost imperceptible scales. The back of the fish is painted brown with a greenish tint, and the belly is cast in a yellow tint. The whole body is covered with mucus, under which elongated scales are hidden.

Distribution and habitats

The European representative of eels lives in rivers and river basins, belonging to the seas: Northern, Baltic, Mediterranean, White, Barents, Azov and Black. The river eel has successfully adapted to the conditions of the European climate. The fish prefers to stay in places of the reservoir where the bottom is covered with clay or mud. She swims among the reeds, reeds. The unique ability of fish is to crawl like a snake on wet grass from one reservoir to another.

The electric eel has a very limited habitat. It is found only in Young America. Electric eel is found in the northeastern part of this continent. It is concentrated in the lower reaches of the Amazon.

The sea eel is distributed in the Atlantic Ocean, starting from the western part of the African mainland and ending with the Bay of Biscay, located in the Mediterranean. Rarely found in other ocean areas. Sometimes the fish swim into the North Sea as far south as Norway. It is also rare in the Black Sea. The sea eel can live both in the open sea and off the coast, the fish does not go deeper than 500 meters.

Diet

River eel, being a predator, comes out to feed at night. During the spawning of other fish species, it feeds on their caviar, and its favorite caviar is carp caviar. But the serpentine predator also feeds on small fish (lampreys, sculpins), newts and frogs. Sometimes larvae, snails, crustaceans and worms become food.

The electric eel is unique. It eats prey stunned by electricity. Moreover, electricity is not generated constantly: the number of discharges is always limited. It is not dangerous for a person, but an electric shock causes him severe pain.

reproduction

The eel reaches sexual maturity late relative to other fish: at 5–12 years. Regardless of where this representative of the ichthyofauna lives, in the river or the sea, it spawns only in the sea. This explains the fact that river forms live only in the basins of the seas: when they reach sexual maturity, the fish goes downstream and remains in the sea to procreate.

When the water warms up to +16 ... +17 degrees Celsius, the spawning period begins. The fecundity of females is higher in marine representatives of eels (about 7–8 million eggs), river forms have a fecundity of up to 500,000 eggs. The diameter of the eggs is approximately 1 mm. Sea eel immediately dies after spawning. The eggs hatch into larvae, which at first float on the surface of the water.

The eel has no sexual characteristics until it reaches puberty. Usually, sexual differences become apparent in fish by 9–12 years of age. At the same time, the eel is darker from the back, and the sides and belly acquire a silvery color. Scientists have not yet established why the eel makes such long migrations in sea ​​waters for reproduction.

Thus, acne is commercial fish, which has high palatability. But eel - in general unique fish, the uniqueness of which is associated with the features of the appearance, the method of stunning the prey, as well as the place that is usually chosen as a spawning ground.