Elvers!

Pete and I found this little guy and 3 others just like it, making its way up the tidal rivulets on Rockport's Front Beach. This is an elver, or glass eel. It's actually a baby eel on the final leg of its transformational journey as an imature "american eel." It has swum (or drifted) for the past year or so, all the way from the Sargasso Sea (north-east of Cuba) where it was born; changing from a tiny, clear leaf-like creature in it's larval stage along the way, and ending up as this elver on Front Beach. (click photos for full size view)

If this guy is lucky, he and his 3 buds will make it all the way up to a little freshwater pond that I grew up on, called "The Mill Pond." He will live his adult life there, growing to about 2 feet long and be about a half inch to 1 inch in diameter. I'm actually guessing on that growth, solely based on the size of the biggest, slimiest, squirming eel that I had ever caught in that pond as a kid back in the 70s and 80s.

Eventually, if it survives the poisons in the run-off and all the kids like me, with all thier deceptive worm-covered hooks, it will eventually get the call to return to salt water and somehow, it will know how to get back to the Sargasso Sea, mate, and probably die there. (apparently scientists still do not know EXACTLY where the actual mating is going on... they're very secretive about it...)

I'm so glad to see they still come up to Rockport. (PHOTO: Peter looks for more elvers in this little rivulet on Front Beach.)