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The annual run of baby eels into Rockport’s Mill Pond has started and we are counting!!

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Eric Hutchins and the volunteer eel counters are counting the baby eels swimming from the ocean up the brook and making their way up the eel ladder to Mill Pond.

​Last year 879 baby eels entered the pond during the annual run which starts on April 1 and ends on October 14. 

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How many eels will we count this year? ​Stay tuned for updated eel counts in 2025!

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Background on the eels:

 

Adult eels living in fresh water spots up and down the East Coast, can reach the length of 24 inches.  At some point, instinct tells them to leave, say, Mill Pond and head out to the Atlantic Ocean. Then they swim over 1000 miles to the Sargasso Sea, where four ocean currents converge in a beautiful blue spot 600 miles wide and 2000 miles long. It’s just east of Bermuda. On the way, the adult eels develop sex organs, (which they never had before) have millions of babies and die. The babies get caught up in the ocean currents and some head for New England, and some of those arrive at Front Beach and begin the slow swim up Mill Brook, up the eel ladder on the dam, and some get into the eel trap, where they are counted, and then start to live in the Pond.

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If another fish, turtle or shorebird doesn’t eat them, they can grow to 18 to 24 inches, and at some point, maybe after 20 years, they get an urging to go back to the Sargasso Sea.