Eel

Names in dialect: anguìla, bisat. 

Eels are classified according to size: glass eels (6-7 cm); elvers (20-25 cm); large female eels (over a kg in weight). They have a snake-shaped body, with very fine scales embedded in their skin, which is covered with slime. The dorsal and anal fins are fused with the tail fin; they have no pelvic fins. They can reach a length of one and a half metres and 6-7 kg in weight.

Eels are found in most of the waters in the Province below an altitude of one thousand metres. They remain hidden during the day and come out at night to feed on aquatic invertebrates and small fish.
They return to the sea to breed but grow to adulthood in fresh water. Eels begin life as flat, transparent, 7-8 cm long larvae shaped like willow leaves (called leptocephali), and drift on the currents for 3-4 years from the breeding grounds in the Atlantic as far as the coasts of Europe. They metamorphose into glass eels, and start migrating up into inland waters, where they become pigmented and take on the characteristics of juvenile eels, or elvers: greenish brown back, small eyes and yellow bellies (“yellow”) eels. After 8-15 years eels enter the reproductive stage: the back becomes black, the belly silver and the eyes enlarged (“argentine” eels) with the males (40-45 cm long) being distinctly smaller than the females when they start their return journey to the sea to the spawning areas, the most famous of which is the Sargasso Sea. Eels may also leave the water and move their bodies like snakes to overcome obstacles.
Eels are highly valued as a food fish. They are also farmed as well as fished (but not in Trentino). As artificial spawning is impossible, they are bred from glass eels collected on a large scale at the mouths of rivers. These are in great demand but over the last few years there has been a significant decrease in their numbers.