Do you know about the Eels at the Belknap Mill?
The Sargasso Sea is an area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by four moving currents, east of the Bermuda Triangle. Eels breed in the Sargasso Sea and then migrate toward the eastern shore of the United States, traveling all the way to Laconia NH!
The eels make their way to rivers and lakes where they can spend up to 30 years, continuing their metamorphosis into silver eels. They burrow themselves in the mud or sandy beaches. Then it’s time to search out rivers, like the Winnipesaukee River, that they can swim up. The eels face many hazards throughout its life cycle, including changes to ocean currents caused by climate change, pollution, poaching and obstacles in waterways such as dams and weirs. They can grow to a length of 2 to 4 feet.
Their migration is during the summer in July and usually takes place on a dark moonless night. Hundreds of eels gather just in front of the grates near the Elm Street Bridge before the turbines there. There is a bypass pipe that they will pass through to get to Lake Opechee, providing a migration pathway enabling fish and other creatures to enter. Some will pass through the turbines and some the seagulls will eat and leave the skeletons in the nearby hotel parking lot.
The problem at the Belknap Mill was there was no way for the eels to bypass the turbines during their migration back to the sea and they became lodged in the turbine wicket gates. This meant that the sluice gates would have to be shut and the canal emptied to clean out the dead eels. When the Mill was still making socks, Laconia children would stand near these racks and catch the eels, hoping to sell them or bring them home for dinner!
For those eels that weren’t caught, they would continue on a thousand-mile journey back to the Sargasso Sea, where they return to reproduce and then die.
