Just when we thought that Dirty Jerse had hit rock bottom, its rivers and forests have become overrun with a slimy, invasive species of eel that can live for months during droughts and change sex if necessary in order to keep reproducing. The Asian swamp eels were found recently in Silver Lake (which is located approximately here in the Eastern U.S.).
Hey, fuggetaboutit!
The swamp eels eat just about anything that moves including invertebrates, fish, reptiles and amphibians and have no known predators, which may pose a disasterous threat to the New Jersey's native ecosystem. They are also highly adaptable, able to live through droughts by burrowing under the ground for weeks and somehow surviving Jersey's icy winters, something they do not face in Asia.
Most likely the swamp eels were accidentally let loose by a keeper of exotic aquariums, and can now be found not only in New Jersey but four other states as well, including Florida. New Jersey is starting an eradication program to locate and dispose of the invasive species. It's a good thing the eels don't eat engine oil and wife beater sweat or they would most likely have spread even faster, possibly growing to the size of small automobiles.
Environment
Comments
I don't know if they are good to eat from the Jersey waters - but perhaps they could be used as living dildos
Posted by: milkshake | September 24, 2008 7:41 PM
Combined with your handle, milkshake, that has to be the most gay comment ever made on this page.
Posted by: vanderleun | September 24, 2008 8:04 PM
Your picture is not a swamp eel. I looked for a good picture but didn't find one right off. Swamp eels don't have pectoral fins. The family is Synbranchidae. The one in New Jersey is probably a Monopterus species, of which there are several established around in the Southern US.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | September 24, 2008 8:56 PM
How do they taste? If they're anything like the ones in sushi, their predator-free status won't last long.
Posted by: Gary | September 24, 2008 8:57 PM
"How do they taste?"
Only the transsexuals from Transylvania taste sweet.
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | September 24, 2008 9:39 PM
I think the animal in the photo is an electric eel-- which is a fish, not an eel. Rather like an article on rats with a picture of a peccary.
Posted by: oryx | September 24, 2008 10:47 PM
oryx - eels are fish.
Posted by: Hogan | September 25, 2008 9:25 AM
If something is called an eel,that means it looks like an eel, but tells us nothing about its relationship. The eel body form is found scattered all around among various groups of modern bony fishes. True eels are those, for example, Anguilla, with a leptocephalus larvae.
I see that swamp eels are regarded as a delicacy among knowledgable gourmets.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | September 25, 2008 1:42 PM
The swamp eel I am most familar with is Ophisternon aenigmaticum, the obscure swamp eel, which we collected at a dozen different localities in Belize. At one locality, we were collecting at night with headlights. It was at a road crossing with a bridge, and there was rip-rap rock laid around the bridge foundation. There was a swamp eel in the rip-rap, with about half its body out in the current. There were schools of Astyanax, about 1.5 in long. I watched the eel grab a couple of the Astyanax. I thought it was pretty efficient in its fishing.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | September 25, 2008 1:55 PM
Hogan- quite right. I had misinterpreted this sentence from Wikipedia's electric eel entry "Despite its name it is not an eel at all but rather a knifefish."
Posted by: oryx | September 25, 2008 2:41 PM
you got problem with dat, Vanderleun dude? I was merely suggesting that them eels good in places your gerbil cannot reach.
Posted by: milkshake | September 25, 2008 3:01 PM
Very interesting fishing. Thanks it is the sharing pictures...
Posted by: cabbagepow | September 26, 2008 8:54 AM
Looks similar to an Amphiuma, which, while also referred to as an eel ("ditch eel," "congo" or "conger eel"... southerners shouldn't be allowed to name things) is actually a salamander
Posted by: Fox1 | October 6, 2008 12:39 PM
It was at a road crossing with a bridge, and there was rip-rap rock laid around the bridge foundation.I see that swamp eels are regarded as a delicacy among knowledgable gourmets.
There was a swamp eel in the rip-rap, with about half its body out in the current. There were schools of Astyanax, about 1.5 in long. I watched the eel grab a couple of the Astyanax. I thought it was pretty efficient in its fishing.
Posted by: film izle | August 10, 2010 8:48 AM