TheDay.com - Going Up: "'Eel-evator' in Old Saybrook is designed to make upstream a little easier to get to
By the time these tiny olive brown serpentines started squiggling down the aluminum slide in the upstream reaches of the Oyster River this spring, they'd already passed through two major life stages and traveled more than 1,000 miles. ...
“This helps them to get up into the upper ponds, otherwise they'd just stay in the lower portions of the river” and face more competition for less habitat, says Chris Cryder, director of restoration and stewardship for Save the Sound, one of the groups involved in the project.
Before the “eel-evator” was built, some of the eels would slither across the grassy top of the dam on rainy nights during high tide. But the numbers reaching the upstream waters above the dam had dwindled, and wildlife biologists concerned about overall decreases in eel populations are looking to projects such as this to help restore it. ..."
