From the Saragosso Sea to my little stream in Arigideen

Our planet would be the poorer for the passing of endangered eels

 A 'juvenile' eel, captured and released in our garden stream, possibly 'lost', in that, as an elver, it should have entered a river, not a dead-end rivulet. Years ago, I caught a yellow eel, in the next stage of development, in the same stream.

A marine biologist friend said that the eel found by my grandnephew in our garden stream might have thought it was heading up a river. I’m wondering if I should try to recapture it and transfer it to the species-rich and scenic River Arigideen.

Heading up our one-metre-wide, leafy brook, it was going nowhere; it’s impassable just above our house. Even in this relatively rainy summer, the trickle of water measures hardly two inches deep in the deepest pools. It reaches the beach 200 metres below us, and spreads into a shallow ‘delta’, flowing 50m more to join salt water.