Vanishing Species

I started filming local crafts and traditions to capture them before they disappeared completely.

I hardly expected the losses to take effect quite so soon, before I had finished the film in fact.

On Saturday evening I dined with the eel-catcher who appears in the film.   During the course of the evening  the conversation inevitably turned to eels.  It seems that eel numbers have declined so much over recent years that they are in danger of becoming extinct.  I guess the majority of anglers will welcome this news.

Eels found in the East Anglian rivers (Anguilla anguilla) breed out in the Sargasso Sea, in an area between Bermuda and Puerto Rico.  The tiny eels are carried by the Gulf Stream until they reach the coasts of  Europe as two or three year old elvers.   They will spend the next twelve years living and growing in our rivers until they are mature enough to return to the Sargasso sea to breed.

The mature silver eels move down river on their way to the distant spawning grounds in late summer and autumn, mainly at night.

 Anguilla Anguilla

Two factors have conspired to threaten the species.  The first is a virus that effects the swim bladder of the eels.  The second is the export of the small elvers which are considered a delicacy and command a high price.   Both these factors result in fewer eels reaching maturity to return to the Sargasso to breed.  It is quite probable that children three generations on will never see a live eel and it is a racing certainty they will never see a live eel catcher.

During the early part of the nineteenth century there was an abundance of eels in the East Anglian waterways.  Some eel catchers made a living by trapping this remarkable fish while the marshman was probably satisfied with taking an eel or two for his family needs with an eel pick.

The Eel pick was a long handled tool with springy tines.   This method was used in shallow inland waters and salt water estuaries.  The eel catcher would look for bubbles from the eel’s fore and aft blow holes.  He would then strike with the pick, if done correctly the tool would be removed with an eel trapped between the tines.   Herons use their bills in the same way.

 Eel Pick

At the end of the nineteenth century catches were recorded by the stone.  In 1914 one eel catcher landed 129 stone of eels in a season.  

The biggest eel ever caught was in 1738 – it weighed sixty two pounds and measured twenty six inches around its girth.   

Ely in Cambridgeshire was once known as the Isle of Eels before steam power was used to drain the surrounding fens.  Such was the value of eels in the 11th century, that they were accepted as payment for taxes to the crown.

One hundred years ago many eel catchers lived aboard small boats out on the broads and estuaries; they used nets and traps to catch saleable volumes of eel.

Eel traps or hives, were made from willow with a conical funnel at the base and  a bung at the neck.  The funnel allowed the eel to squeeze into the trap but once inside it could not get out.  

Willow Eel Hive

The same principal is applied to fyke nets.   

The fyke net is a long net supported by metal hoops with three funnels or purses at the end, a long runner guides the eels into the purse and traps them in the same way as the old willow traps. 

My Eel-catcher friend assured me that eel numbers have declined by some eighty five per cent in the last few years - no species can survive those kind of losses.  Catches of eels are down year on year to a point when it is no longer viable to catch them for profit.

Long gone are the days when boxes of eels covered in wet sacks would be sent by rail to London to provide the capital with their diet of  "jellied eels"   Unless some form of conservation is rapidly deployed we will lose these remarkable creatures.  


Sadly it seems my trips out with the eel catcher on those long summer evenings are already a thing of the past.

Reed Cutting On The Waveney.

Monday 14th February 2011.

A brisk Easterly wind sweeps across the Waveney marshes. The same Easterly that not so long ago powered merchant ships, ground  corn and drained  pastures.  Today the same Easterly with no real work to do mischievously scurries through the reed beds.  The reeds turn away and bend  their heads to mark its passing as it hurries down stream whipping the water into sunlit liquid crystal.

There is an excessively low tide this morning, the reed cutter's boat lies almost six feet below the landing stage.  I am not a natural sailor or as nimble as I used to be.  I peer over the edge of the timbers and lower the camera and equipment into the hands of the men already in the boat.  Then trusting in God and providence I make my leap of  faith into the dinghy  - a few minutes later we are rowing toward the reed beds on the far side of the Waveney.   

A small number of  people still harvest reed, but to make it viable  and compete with imports from Eastern  Europe, the reed is cut mostly by machine.

Today I am filming one of the last marshmen to harvest reed by hand in the traditional way.  I feel compelled to record the process before it disappears forever - as it surely will. 

The marsh is waterlogged, every footstep fills with water as I follow the reed cutter and his son across the reed bed.  The wind coming off the sea is cold and biting,  there is no welcome on the banks of the Waveney this morning.

Historically Reed-cutting provided an income in winter when no other work was available.  Farm labourers, marshmen and fishermen would seek employment on the reed beds.  The season was short but intensive, beginning around December after the first frost of winter and ending in March when the new reed colts appeared.  In shallow, slow moving rivers men would stand up to their thighs in the freezing cold water cutting reed at the water's edge.  Or they would scythe their way across the ronds in majestic sweeping actions, the spiteful Easterly wind a constant companion.  Reed would be bundled into shooks and loaded onto reed lighters then taken downstream to staithes, from there Wherries would carry them away.   As I film the process it seems very little has changed.

One hundred and fifty years ago reed cutters would have been a common sight on the river banks except there were few people to see them, apart from maybe an eel catcher or a passing wherry.   Leisure craft were the preserve of the wealthy and only took to the water in summer long after the reed harvest was over.

A roof thatched with Norfolk reed is warm in winter and cool in summer and it can last up to seventy years.   Reed  is graded by annual growth.  Single wale is a single years growth which produces the best quality Reed.    Double wale is growth that has been left for two years.

The reed is cut close to the ground with extremely sharp hooks,  then the cutter gathers enough reed for a bundle, roughly a circumference of  about twenty-four inches.  Equivalent to three hand spans.  The bundle is raked clean and loosely tied with twine.

 

When every bundle is free of debris  it is dropped onto a "knocking" board forcing  the twine to tighten around the reed butts .  What appears to be a simple method is a very skilled process learned over many years.  Unless each bundle is a uniform size and density  the quality of the thatch will suffer.  


By mid afternoon we had finished filming and the dinghy carried me back across the Waveney toward the stacks of reed safely stock-piled on the river wall.  The oars creaked in the rowlocks as the dinghy returned me to the 21st century.

To see the Reed cutters working on the Waveney in April at the end of the harvest go to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBfYX_mxNtc