Do Not Mess With Fish 87,

and you thought fish were fun! and before you say it eels (Anguilla anguilla) are fish, it is just that they are a bit longer than most other fish, strangely enough only a couple of days ago whilst having a meal with Nick and Maureen, Mick and Mass we were talking about localised food dishes in the UK, when the subject of jellied eels came up as being a predominately South London dish, many years ago a cheap dish for the poor of the East End, I mentioned the pie and mash shop in Greenwich where I have often eaten, mainly famous for it's pies it also sells jellied ells, Goddard's, my gran used to take me to Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark, walk under the Thames and back, have a snack in the square, then home to Plumstead, but back to eels, they have a strange life, they are born in the Sargasso Sea, they migrate across the Atlantic to European rivers where they remain for several years, then it is assumed they swim back to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce, however whist countless millions of young have been recorded as coming to Europe not a single specimen has been found or caught going back to spawn, as I said they have a strange life, it appears that there numbers could be in terminal decline, numbers coming into the Thames are down a staggering 97%! this figure is being repeated all over Europe and nobody knows why, for me there is an obvious explanation, young eels called elvers are being caught in untold millions as they make there way upstream, this is not sustainable fishing, it is fishing to destruction, well that's my view, I hope the scientist find a better reason and prove me wrong.