Don't Eat The Lamprey

[TicTokCroc]

The Eel World: Inside Maine's Wild Elver Turf War

<b>In an economically depressed Maine county, Bill Sheldon is the kingpin of a $40 million baby-eel industry that may be doomed to extinction.</b> Find out what happens when a community full of armed fishermen and elver dealers stop being polite and start getting real.

www.buzzfeed.com

Welp see you guys on the other side, I'm moving to the east cost to catch eels...

 

[DoesItFloat]

Mmmmm poly-chlorinated biphenyl burgers with a side of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and just a sprinkle of DDT. Hold the typhoid, please.

 

[Gary Knowels]

I've always wanted to go poke pole up a monkey faced eel on the jetty. They are also not real eels! I can't remember the show but I think it was on discovery or history channel a while ago, there was a guy on the east coast who had an eel trap on a river and his job was basically trap, smoke and sell eels, evidently quite the delicacy.

Filthy Riches, I love that show. That guy was a character as were the blood workers, ginseng hunters, and mushroom foragers.

 

[JayB]

 

[TicTokCroc]

Filthy Riches, I love that show. That guy was a character as were the blood workers, ginseng hunters, and mushroom foragers.

Yep that's it! that was a great show.

 

[Stonedfish]

Lamprey pie: Michigan man prepares to ship invasive, blood-sucking fish to England for king's coronation — USA TODAY

One man's poison is another man's meat; or pie. Michiganders despise the invasive lamprey fish but will ship some to England for the new king's pie.

apple.news

 

[PhilR]

It pretty interesting how they harvest those monkey face eels from the rocks with a stick, mono or wire and a chunk of squid on a hook.

As @Travis Bille mentioned, smoked eel is excellent.
This is in Amsterdam but I’d be begging for an invite from that store if I lived nearby.
SF

There are a bunch of you tube videos of people poke poling on the Oregon jetties, too.

 

[Stonedfish]

There are a bunch of you tube videos of people poke poling on the Oregon jetties, too.

Cool! It would be fun to try sometime.
SF

 

[Chadk]

Lamprey (and hagfish) are at the base of fish evolution, collectively the jawless fishes or Agnatha. Pacific lamprey, like Pacific salmon, are anadromous (grow in salt water, breed in freshwater) and semelparous (breed once and die). The adults when at sea rasp tissue and fluids from the bodies of bony fishes. Other lampreys, like brook lampreys, complete their whole lives in freshwater and are primarily filter-feeders/detritivores. As @Buzzy and @Stonedfish pointed out previously Pacific lamprey do have important place in the culture of inlands PNW tribes. I know that the Yakama Nation has a specific program to rebuild Pacific lamprey populations in the Columbia River.
In the PNW, we do not have true eels (Order Anguilliformes). This group includes moray eels, conger eels, and freshwater eels (Family Anguillidae). The anguillid eels are catadromous, the opposite of anadromous. And they are semelparous -> spawn once and die. Members of this family breed in the ocean and migrate as larvae into freshwater rivers. They may spend several years in lakes and rivers before migrating back to the ocean and to the general area where they were born. American eels (Anguilla rostrata) and European eels (A. anguilla) have historically been harvested in hoop traps. It is VERY disconcerting to be snorkeling in a freshwater pond in New England and have a 3-4' long eel swim up to you. Both species migrate thousands of miles to spawn in the Sargasso Sea. Both species (but especially the European eel - considered critically endangered) are in substantial decline due to poor freshwater conditions, barriers to freshwater migration, and overharvesting.
The other "eel-like marine fishes in the PNW are not members of the Anguilliformes. The wolf eel is in its own family, the Anarhichadidae, and most closely related to another group of eel-like fishes, the eel pouts (Family Zoarcidae). The eel-like fishes that you find in tide pools and under rocks in the intertidal are various species in the family Pholidae (gunnels, a family within suborder Zoarcoidei) and the Stichaedae (a family within the order Perciformes). The ling cod is an eel-like fish related to greenling; it is neither a ling (a type of cod) or a cod. Common names can be a nightmare. [Though, to be honest, the use of molecular phylogenies have led to major disruptions to the scientific names, both genus or species, for lots of marine organisms. But that has the potential to settle down with more accurate understanding of the evolution of diversity on Earth.]
Steve

Great info. But this part seems off:

"Lamprey ... are at the base of fish evolution... The adults when at sea rasp tissue and fluids from the bodies of bony fishes."

Sounds sort of chicken and egg...

 

[Snopro]

I believe the local tribes used to harvest lampreys.

I think they're the only people who legally can. I enjoyed watching the younger tribal members picking them off the walls of Willamette falls.

 

[Mossback]

Cool! It would be fun to try sometime.
SF

Combine with a catfish noodling trip...

 

[Gyrfalcon22]

Some may remember my Pacific lamprey rescue missions I had last year? I cannot recall if it was this site or the other. Really cool to have, literally, hands on time with these creatures. Not a mushy soft fish, but super dense and very (incredibly) strong as they twisted as I packed them quite a ways back to the river. They had been stranded after the floods and were sitting in muck for some time. Low 20"'s long?

The numbers do appear to be down from my sightings over the years here in this large coastal river.

 

[Cabezon]

Great info. But this part seems off:

"Lamprey ... are at the base of fish evolution... The adults when at sea rasp tissue and fluids from the bodies of bony fishes."

Sounds sort of chicken and egg...

I kind of understand your point. But it presupposes a static evolutionary perspective. Even if there weren’t bony fishes around when lampreys and hagfishes first appeared in the fossil record (quite minimal, by the way, because they don’t have robust skeletons), there would have been other organisms that lived in the water column (ammonites?) for the ancestors of Pacific lampreys to gnosh on.

 

[Old Man]

My take on Lamprey Pie is after you cook it that you throw the pie away and eat the dish.

 

[Bagman]

I ate eel when I was in Germany many years ago, it was real tasty as I remember. I can’t remember how it was prepared tho.

 

[jaredoconnor]

Between the Hanford Site, Duwamish superfund site, Elma nuclear plants and the poorly designed sewage system that will always be prone to overflows, eating anything out of the water in this state seems like a low IQ test.

 

[Gyrfalcon22]

Between the Hanford Site, Duwamish superfund site, Elma nuclear plants and a poorly designed sewage system that will always be prone to overflows, eating anything out of the water in this state seems like a low IQ test.

The only danger from the never plugged in nuclear site in Elma is all the hair dye run off from aging Metalheads making music videos there..(rip Mike Howe)

 

[RRSmith]

I had BBQ'd Pacific lamprey at a Yurok tribal gathering in Klamath many years ago. As I recall, the BBQ'd lamprey was dense, fat and delicious. The tribal members harvest with a gaff like tool as the lamprey come across the sand bar at the river mouth. These aren't my images but it's pretty cool how they gig them.