With the Wild Things: Eels

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|a With the Wild Things: Eels |h [electronic resource].

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|a Ft. Myers, Florida : |b Whitaker Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University.

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|a 4 podcasts, approximately 1 minute each in length

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|a Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the users responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.

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|a Source: Eels 1 Length of Segment: 00:01:13 Hi, I’m Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Eels are fishes that most people have heard of and that have crept into our language and folklore. They're all slim and somewhat snake-like in appearance, their fins have no spines to support them, and they lack fins on their belly-side. Most of them have such tiny scales that they appear scale-less. The combination of these characteristics and the coating of mucus that covers their body have given rise to our expression “Slippery as an eel”. Eels are an incredibly diverse group of fishes including more than twenty families and more than 600 species. Most eels are from the oceans of the world, but a few got into fresh water. While we know a great deal about the American and European eels that are commercially important and the spectacular moray eels of coral reefs, there are many eels about which we know almost nothing. Our propensity to call anything long, slender, and slippery an 'eel' confuses things. For example, both the amphiuma, a long slender salamander native to the southeastern United States, and the American eel, a fish that is a real eel, are often called 'Congo eel'.

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|a Source: Eels 2 Length of Segment: 00:01:15 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Among the most spectacular of eels are the moray eels of tropical waters. Most are large, averaging five to six feet in length, but some rarely get more than six inches long and others can reach ten feet. The moray eels are found in rocky areas and on coral reefs, where they find crevices and small caves in which to hide. My colleague, Dr. Greg Tolley, described a moray eel as “Nature's way of making the biggest possible fish fit into the smallest possible hole.” These eels are flattened from side to side, their skull bones have been pushed back to form a long, narrow head. They lack paired fins, their gills have been reduced to small round openings, and they have a thick, tough, leathery skin. A moray backs into a hole. Once inside, it uses the strong muscles of the back part of its body to wrap around rock or coral to anchor itself in place. A moray eel then sits at the entrance to its home with its mouth open, ready to grab any potential meal that swims by. Moray eels are often aggressive and territorial, but during the breeding season, a male and female are sometimes seen together. As they say, “That's Amore!”

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|a Source: Eels 3 Length of Segment: 00:01:12 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. The green moray eel averages about six feet in length, but sometimes reaches more than eight feet. It's found in shallow tropical and sub-tropical ocean waters of the Americas. In the Gulf of Mexico, it sometimes makes its home among the roots of mangroves and in the Keys, it's intimately associated with coral reefs. Its green color is a result of the yellowish mucus that covers its blue skin. This mucus is continuously produced and protects the moray from parasites and disease. The green moray is a predator that feeds on a diversity of fishes, shrimp, octopuses, and other creatures that pass its hiding place. The green moray is nocturnal and has poor eyesight; it finds food primarily by smell, but movement near its hiding place can trigger a quick reaction. While morays do not usually attack human divers, a hand in the wrong place at the wrong time can result in a serious bite. From July into September, female green morays release eggs into the water and males release sperm over them. The fertilized eggs float to the surface where the young eels hatch and are dispersed by the currents and wind to new areas.

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|a Source: Eels 4 Length of Segment: 00:01:15 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. The American eels is the only freshwater eel that occurs in North America and like its European counterpart, it only lives part of its life in freshwater. While usually smaller, it can grow to about five feet. American and European eels live as adults in rivers and streams, often swimming upstream in Florida to some of our springs. They are also tough fishes, able to survive out of water long enough to move through wet grass from a stream to nearby ponds. When it comes time to breed, these eels swim downstream to the Gulf of Mexico on the Atlantic to an area of the Atlantic known as the 'Sargasso Sea'. The Sargasso Sea is two million square mile area of relatively calm water south of Bermuda where there is an abundance of floating sea plants known as sargassum. It's among these plants that American and European eels lay their eggs and where their young find safety and food to begin life before migrating to the rivers and streams of America and Europe. Both American and European eels are important commercial fishes, but they're also poisonous unless cooked. Their blood includes toxins that are destroyed by cooking.

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|a Added automatically.

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|a Eels.

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|a Dr. Jerry Jackson.

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|t Eels 1

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|t Eels 2

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|t Eels 3

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|t Eels 4

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|a dpSobek.

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|a Everglades Digital Library: Reclaiming the Everglades.

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|a With the Wild Things.

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|a dpSobek |c Everglades Digital Library: Reclaiming the Everglades

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|u http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI14090835/00001 |y Electronic Resource

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|3 FIU Helix Media Library |u http://libtube.fiu.edu/player?autostart=n&fullscreen=y&width=320&height=260&videoId=842&quality=hi&captions=n&chapterId=0 |y Eels 1

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|3 FIU Helix Media Library |u http://libtube.fiu.edu/player?autostart=n&fullscreen=y&width=320&height=260&videoId=846&quality=hi&captions=n&chapterId=0 |y Eels 2

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|3 FIU Helix Media Library |u http://libtube.fiu.edu/player?autostart=n&fullscreen=y&width=320&height=260&videoId=847&quality=hi&captions=n&chapterId=0 |y Eels 3

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|3 FIU Helix Media Library |u http://libtube.fiu.edu/player?autostart=n&fullscreen=y&width=320&height=260&videoId=848&quality=hi&captions=n&chapterId=0 |y Eels 4

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|a Everglades Digital Library: Reclaiming the Everglades