IT may not quite be Jersey’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster… but a dark and shadowy figure or two have been spotted in the murky depths of the pond next to Queen’s Valley Reservoir.
While carrying out research into Jersey’s little-known common-eel population, environmentalists found several of the slippery creatures in the silt pond next to the main car park.
And some of them are up to one-metre long – and may have lived there since not long after the reservoir was built more than 30 years ago.
Female common eels would usually leave their freshwater home and swim out to the Sargasso Sea, in the west Atlantic, to breed before dying. The young eels then drift back east on ocean currents and return inland before the breeding cycle eventually starts again.
However, mainly due to their size, it is believed that the Queen’s Valley eels – who are effectively landlocked – may have lived in the pond since soon after the reservoir opened in 1991.
Environmentalist Bob Tompkins, the JEP’s nature correspondent, said: ‘They are big eels and some of them are seriously big.
‘We are not entirely sure how many of them are there but we have identified five based on scars and colouration.
‘They are very strong and formidable predators and will eat fish, newts and toads. They would even take a duckling if they found one asleep on the water at night.’
Mr Tompkins is part of a small group which hopes to discover more about the locations and movements of Jersey’s common eel, a species which has seen its population drop by 94% across Europe. The group hopes that its research will help efforts to make the eel a protected species in Jersey, as it is in Europe and the UK.
