Why Are Eels Long?

Get ready to feel some eelings. In this episode of Aquarium of the Podcific, Aquarist Heidi takes listeners on a deep dive into the wonderfully weird world of eels, from “true” eels and their tube-sock vibes to the grandpa-faced wolf eels that only look like the real deal.

Episode resources:

• ⁠⁠⁠Transcript⁠⁠⁠
• Follow ⁠⁠⁠@podcific⁠⁠⁠ on Instagram!
• Email us at [e-mail]
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Brooke’s Rockfish Survey Trip + Vlog
• Dragon Eel

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Hi, I'm Aaron Lundy. And I'm Madeline Walton, and
this is Aquarium. Of the pod civic.
A podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific,
Southern Californias largest aquarium.
Join us as we learned alongside the experts in animal care,
conservation and more. Welcome back to Aquarium of the
Pacific. My name is Aaron Lundy and I'm
the manager of conservation initiatives here at the Aquarium

(00:28):
of the Pacific. And I am joined by my wonderful
Co host who that's you. That's me.
Yeah, that's you. I'm Madeline Walden.
I'm the aquarium digital contentand community manager.
And today we have Heidi Johnson on who's going to talk to us
about eels. About eels, We love eels, we
love eels. We're excited, we're so excited.
We had a lot of questions from our social about eels when we

(00:50):
asked what your number one question was.
It's about eel reproduction and if you know, you know.
And if you don't know you're gonna, you're.
About to know? Stay tuned because you will
know. You will find out today that
potentially there is some eel information or misinformation
floating around up there. Eels.
Serious eels. The mysterious of the.

(01:11):
Pacific. So Heidi's going to teach us all
about what it means to take careof eels here at the Aquarium of
the Pacific, in addition to describing the six.
I didn't know we had six different species that we have
here, from the very tiny and stripy garden eels to the big
and beautiful California mores that Heidi primarily takes care
of. And we get to learn about eel
surgery and to learn about how smart they are that they can

(01:34):
potentially join scouts for a very specific reason that I
learned today. And that basically taking care
of eels is a lot like taking care of other animals here at
the aquarium where you work really, really hard and
sometimes they don't appreciate the things that you do because
animals be animals. And that is what it means to be
an animal care. If you enjoy this episode and
the other episodes of Aquarium of the Pod Cific, your five star

(01:57):
review on whatever platform thatyou were listening on would mean
so much to us and really helps us go a long way on that
platform. So we appreciate that so much.
You can also e-mail us at pod Cific at lbaop.org.
Again, pod cific, pod CIFIC at lbaop.org, we've.
Gotten a few really awesome emails from people either just

(02:18):
reaching out with questions or some people who have just wanted
to tell us about their podcast experience or you know what it
meant to them to listen to the. World it means more than you
know this is really a labor of love for me and Erin's and we
love doing it so every. Time Madeline gets an e-mail
about the POTS of IK, which she typically feels the emails.
I know about it within 2 secondsand we're usually talking about
it like a couple days, so pleasee-mail us.

(02:41):
E-mail us and if you have any suggestions for future episodes,
we would love to hear them. Many episodes so far have been
because of suggestions from our from our friends here at the
aquarium who listen and also outside of the aquarium, so we
appreciate it. Let's get into the episode.
Back to Aquarius of Podsific. Today we are joined by Heidi
Johnson. Heidi is an aquarist here at the
aquarium. What's your, what level of

(03:02):
Aquarius are you? I'm in Aquarius too, on our
temperate waters team. Very cool.
What is the temperate waters team?
Yeah. So I take care of our fish and
invertebrates in our cold water galleries.
So that's in Southern Californiaand our Northern Pacific and all
sorts of fun critters in there. The chilly, chilly exhibits.
Yeah. We stay cold and it's nice.

(03:24):
So we divide our Aquarius team by warmth of water, tropical and
kind of. Yeah, that's the main divide.
And then we've got a couple other branches.
And then there's live foods people and conservation people,
although we're all conservation people at the end of the day,
so. The night we have our quarantine
team. And quarantine which?
Deals with everything warm and. Cold.

(03:44):
They have to get used to all temperatures of water.
Yeah, they're the most adopted out of all of us.
Amazing. And how long have you been at
the aquarium now? I've been here over 4 years now.
Cool. Oh my.
Gosh, I can't believe it. Time flies.
That's awesome. What was your background before
working here? I was kind of hopping around in
marine science trying to figure out where I wanted to be and
started off in education, doing outdoor education with kids,

(04:07):
which was super cool in lots of ocean settings and forest
settings. And then went from there more
into the science side and did some field research jobs.
That eventually, through workingmore with animals and
volunteering at aquariums and other animal places got me here,
where now I get to work with animals every day and still do
some science and research. Amazing.

(04:30):
And do you have a favorite animal that you work with?
Doesn't have to be. That's really hard individual.
And species. Yeah, you have to give us 2
answers right now. Go.
Well, I work with our leopard shark, Sam in Casino Point.
He's he's very sweet. He's always a favorite.
Can you tell our audience a little bit about Sam?
I think we mentioned him on the podcast, but I bet we can have
an episode just about Sam. I mean, he's pretty cool.

(04:51):
He's a star. Yeah.
Yeah. He is a California species of
shark, a leopard shark that lives in our cult forest
exhibit. And he's our only male leopard
shark here. And his claim to name is in the
patterning on their side. They have these really cool kind
of splotches along their sides. And his just naturally happened
to form the letters I am. So we call him I am Sam.

(05:15):
It's so, it's so uncanny and like I love that he's such a
figure here at the aquarium, butand people have caught on to it.
Like it's almost like we plannedit.
It looks like someone wrote on his like it just says I am.
And is it that he has a slightlydifferent coloration than other
leopard sharks? Like is he more variegated or is
it just that his this pattern happens to be that way?
He just happens to be that way. In our blue Cavern exhibit, we

(05:37):
have a variegated pattern leopard shark, and so you can
see the difference more with that one.
But yeah, Sam's just special. So pretty.
When I first started they calledhim the existential shark.
I didn't hear Sam for a while. I am who am I now before I am
shark? And now he knows.
Now he's Sam. Now he's he does know.
He's heard. Heidi helped him find himself.
Now he's all good. He's so cool.

(05:59):
OK, so we're going to talk abouteel specifically today.
Heidi works more directly with more eels.
What is a more eel? Yeah, eels are super cool.
There's tons of different types of eels and they are a fish I
know they look like. Say it's a big.
Question yeah, what is that? Yeah, a lot of people might
think there's something else, which is totally valid because
they're just these tube shaped animals that have these goofy

(06:22):
faces. And you'll often see them
sitting in a crevice with just their head sticking out so you
can't even tell what the whole animal is.
But they are a type of fish and they have a few things that kind
of set them apart from the rest of the fish world.
One of the main ones, it would be that they don't really have
scales like most fish do. You'll think of eels as being

(06:44):
kind of slimy and green a lot oftimes, not in a gross way.
They're very cute. What do they feel like to you if
you've touched them? They're very smooth and.
Soft. Are they at all slimy?
A little bit. They do have a mucus layer
instead of scales because they. It's allergy, so you're very
electric. Yeah, that mucus layer is really

(07:05):
helpful for them because many eels live in rock crevices where
it's not the most comfy habitat,not the classic bedroom you
would think of. So instead of having scales that
could break off when they're rubbing up against the rocks,
they have tough skin and a layerof mucus that makes it easier
for them to slide around. Would you compare it to like a
Stingray, just maybe a little bit softer, a little gooey or

(07:27):
or? Yeah, exactly.
A gooey or Stingray. I wouldn't say it was gooey or
but if you touched the Stingrayshere in our touch tanks, you'll
feel kind of that same texture that eels are softer, they're a
little swishier. Lovely, I like that.
About that I. Do too.
Amazing. OK, so there you gave us a great
instruction to eels, and there'sthis thing called true eels.

(07:49):
And then there's this thing called fake eels, you'll assume
on the other side of it. So what makes a true eel a true
eel, and what makes a fake eel or poser eel?
Poser posers, yeah. Yeah, get them out of here.
No, we love them. Yeah.
So a good example to compare them to is a wolf eel, which is
our poser eel. It's a fake eel and they're

(08:11):
really just another type of fish.
And so our wolf eels have pectoral fins that kind of hand
like fins on the side, whereas atrue eel, it doesn't look like
it has any fins. It has no pectoral fins, and
then the rest of the fins on itsbody are all fused into one kind
of long elongated body tail combo.

(08:32):
Does that make electric eels also a fake eel?
Yes, wow. Because they have little fins,
I've seen their pectoral. Fins.
I didn't, you know, I've never really thought about the fact
that there are no fins on the animal.
So when you're describing, I waslike, they are kind of just like
a long sock, like they're not. There's nothing else, just a
tube. Yeah, it's really interesting.
And I didn't realize electric eels aren't true eels.

(08:54):
Yeah, electric. And people think any eel might
be electric and be a little worried about it, but it's only
these fake eels and it's only freshwater eels that are
electric eels and they're actually a type of knife fish,
so just another fish. So wolf eels that we have here
are not considered true eels. They're just a super long fish
that like exactly on the yeah. So they're in a group of fish

(09:17):
called wolf fish, very aptly named.
And the wolf eels are the only ones that are super long like
that and kind of the tricksters that make us think they're eels.
If you've seen a wolf eel has a really goofy kind of grandpa
face with giant jaws, and then it also has really visible gill
coverings, whereas true eels don't have those gill coverings.

(09:38):
So many fish, almost all Bony fish, have what's called an an
operculum, which is like a hard covering protecting its gills.
And when they breathe underwater, they'll pump those
operculums back and forth to force water over their gills.
And since true eels don't have this, instead it kind of looks
like they have two holes on the sides of their heads.

(09:59):
Yeah. Oh, that's their game.
People think it might be their ears, kind of looks like ears,
but that's where their gills are.
It's in an ear spot, ear adjacent.
Do they have ears? Do they hear?
If they were to have ears, that's where they would be.
But they do have ears, so where are they?
They're hidden. They're just kind of secret.
Yeah, Secret. None of my business, yeah.
Yeah, stop asking. I know, actually.

(10:20):
Why stop wondering about their ears?
That is interesting. Yeah, so since they aren't able
to pump that water over their gills with an operculum, instead
you'll see them opening and closing their mouths.
So a lot of times you'll look really happy and smiley and
they'll be sitting there with their mouths open or look like
they're trying to say something but are just too shy, and that's
them moving that water through their mouth and over their

(10:41):
gills. A follow up question about our
wolf eels specifically. They are always laying down with
their mouth open but they have no perculum.
Why are they doing that? They're just their own special
kind of friends. They just like saw eels and
they're like, that's cool, I gotto.
Evolve and I'd be jealous. I tried to be an eel too, but
yeah, our wolf eels are very cute that they're very cuddly

(11:03):
with each other too, and they'rejust very relaxed and always
kind of lounging around with each other and they're all
stabby. They're each other relaxed
enough to have their mouths openall the time, too.
Where are Wolf Eels located if you were visiting the
acquirement of Pacific? Yeah, we have them in our
Northern Pacific preview exhibit, which is kind of by our
coffee cart, if you. Walk in on the If you're getting

(11:24):
your coffee, go look at the grandpa fish.
They're laying on the bottom. They're fine.
We get calls about them all the time.
We promise they are a OK. They just do that.
They just do that. They just look, they're trying
to be eels but just live in their lives.
So back to real. OK, yeah, let's stop talking
about these guys so. Other anatomy about eels, so
they have fused fins, so they just have no external little

(11:46):
fins. So if you see fins, that's not a
real eel, that's a faker. Immediate disqualifier.
Don't even look at it. Then they don't have an
operculum, so they just have a little hole on either side of
them and they breathe by openingand closing their mouth.
What? Why don't they have fins?
Like what? What happened evolutionarily
that these fish don't have fence?
So they're really adapted to these kind of tiny environments

(12:09):
they're living in. So I mean, there's tons of
different eel species. There's over 800 species of
eels. Wow.
And then I work with Mori eels and within the mores there's
still 200 different species of eels.
So they're all very different, lots of diversity within them.
But many of them live in these rock references or maybe in
Burrows in the sand. And they're all in these kind of

(12:31):
tight places where it doesn't really do them any good to have
extra fins sticking out, gettingin the way and getting damaged.
So instead, they'd rather be more flexible and streamlined
and able to maneuver their bodies easier into these
crevices. So I have seen our eels here
free swimming a handful of timesand it is the weirdest looking

(12:51):
thing in the entire world. And I'm guessing that's because
that's not super normal behaviorfor them to just be out and
about in the open ocean just swimming around.
I've seen them do it, but normally they would be a kind of
all curled up in a crevice and living in a rock cave.
Exactly. Yeah, eels are mostly nocturnal
as well, so I might they might be out and around looking for
food a little more, but usually humans aren't going to be seeing

(13:12):
them doing that, or more likely to see them kind of tucked in
with just their heads looking out of the rock.
If you're near an exhibit with an eel in it and it is out
swimming, you will hear our guests exclaim, Whoa, what's
that? So weird.
Whoa. What the heck?
As they should. It's.
So really exciting. It's really cool.
I feel very lucky for it to be like a a seemingly normal thing.
But also every time I do see it's like, wow, I have to stop

(13:33):
and like watch it. Where are you going it?
Looks like a tube sock in the middle.
Just like what? Hack a ribbon?
Yeah. Do they move kind of like how a
snake would move like sidewindery when they're moving
through the water, or how are they propelling themselves
forward without fins? Yeah, kind of like that.
I mean, snakes have lots of different ways to move.
The specific kind of snakes that.
Yeah. So I'm sure there's at least one

(13:53):
way a snake moves that's the same as an eel, but they're more
using like all those fused fins and that extended tail to propel
themselves like back and forth with switch of their tail to go
forward. Kind of like an S shape movement
through the water. All right.
Is it all true eels? Hard to say.
Yeah. Well, you work mostly with our

(14:14):
Mora eels, but what type of eelsdo we have here at the aquarium?
Yeah, we have 6 different species of eels here.
So I work with our California mores, which are in our Southern
California habitats. And then up in our tropical
gallery is where you'll find therest of our eels.
So in our tropical tunnel, we'llhave several eels up there,

(14:36):
including our honeycomb Moray eel, which has a really pretty
pattern along its side. Beautiful.
We have our dragon Moray, which they're, they're the coolest.
If you haven't seen them, you got to look up a picture.
We just actually can text them. I'll show you, Aaron.
Yeah, they've got just the coolest faces, and they're very
aptly named for a dragon. He's so cute.

(15:00):
Wow, weird cool guy. And soft coral.
Yeah, wow. OK, Yeah, definitely.
Go look at. I mean, look at all of them, but
especially look at this guy. Shout out to our volunteer diver
Ken Curtis who took some amazingpictures and I will have to link
to them in the show notes. Yeah, those are beautiful.
Yeah. And then sharing that habitat,
we also have two zebra mores which have really pretty kind of

(15:22):
zebra striped patterns. And then in our Living Coral
exhibit, a smaller coral tank. In our tropical gallery we have
a small eel who is yellow bandedMoray.
What about garden eels? And garden eels, yes.
Those are real eels. As they are, yeah.
People love our garden eel habitat.
It's in our Gulf of California exhibit.

(15:42):
Garden eels Talk about a tube sock, that's what they.
Look like they're really they're.
Orange and white striped tube socks, but tiny.
Yeah, little candy canes. So they are in upstairs in our
Gulf of California exhibit and we actually have a magnifying
glass because they are a little bit smaller and it's really fun
to move it around and I know kids love it too.
It's a really sweet. Yeah, I love it.
Interaction. Up there I still do that every

(16:03):
time I walk by the garden. Eel behavior is a little bit
different than the other eels and that they are always
sticking straight out of the sand, which is not something I
see are other eels doing. Is that something other species
of eels do or not? The definitely not the ones we
have, but they just kind of looklike they're growing.
Eels we have here that do that, but there are plenty of other
eels that are adopted for life in the sandy flats.

(16:26):
And because there's no rocks or anything for them to hide out
in, in the sand, they make little Burrows under the sand.
And we actually dive in our exhibit at the garden eels.
And when a person gets in there,they all kind of shoot back up
into the sand and hide and are buried deep enough that they
aren't getting hurt with the human walking around in there.
Do they have like a Burrow underneath there or are they

(16:47):
just in sand? You know what I mean?
Like is it like? A little hole, completely sure.
I think they are able to kind ofscoot their tails back in and
kind of dig it as they go would be my guess.
They are really fascinating to watch.
It's it's so cool to see that behavior in like something so
tiny and just and it be reactive.
Even when you pass the habitat, they'll they can see you just as
well as you see them. So they might kind of, you know,

(17:07):
go down for a second, then come back out and Pikachu, it's
Pikachu. They are pretty cute.
Amazing. So garden eels are true eels and
we do have them here. In addition to three species of
mores you said, we have California honeycomb, dragon,
zebra and zebra. We have 4.
Species 4 species, Where is that?
Yes, the yellow bandit doesn't Mori as well, so we mostly have

(17:28):
more eels here. That's Amore.
That's amore I. Love helping us for knowing that
joke. And somewhere in this episode
do. Are those the same genus but
different species and therefore could interbreed?
Do people ever hybridize them oris that ever something that's
seen Is hybridized more eels? I believe they are the same
genius, but I don't know anything about them
interbreeding. That'd be crazy.

(17:49):
I imagine they're different enough and they live in such
different habitats that that wouldn't really happen.
It's unlikely to happen in nature, and that's what we know
Speaking of. Nature Where are eels found in
nature? Everywhere, everywhere.
They're all over the place. We've got tropical eels, we've
got cold water eels. Pretty much every ocean you'll
find eels. That's so cool.
Is there like specific habitats in which you'd find bigger eels

(18:11):
or smaller eels like our GPO? I know Brooke had said there was
some monster GPO that lives in Alaska and terrified it must eat
dolphins because it's so large. But is it cold water that you
know sort of you will see a trend and increase in size of
animals are California more is pretty big it looks like, but I
don't know how that compares to our tropical.
Species, yeah, I would say it just varies a lot.

(18:34):
I don't know for sure where the biggest eels are going to be
found. Tell me where?
They are, but I mean, eels rangein size a lot from like under 5
inches to all the way up to over10 feet.
And our California morays are kind of, you know, nicely in the
middle there with getting to about like 5 feet long.
What's a 10 foot eel and where? That is our giant Moray.

(18:56):
Oh, that's a good name for it. Excel Moray.
I could see XL more. That's interesting the more you
know about eels. Do you have a favorite species
of Moray? I'm very partial to the
California Moray eel since that's who I work with and I'm
also a scuba diver and get to see them in the wild a lot and
they're very cool. I know there is some fancier

(19:17):
looking eels out there like the dragon eel, but these guys will
always have my heart. Yay, you like the classic.
Yeah, yeah. How many do we have of the
California Moray? I believe we have 4 right now.
Oh wow. Yeah.
So one of them is with our lobsters and then the other
three are all hanging out together in our Casino Point
exhibit. How's he doing with lobsters as

(19:38):
neighbors? They get along really well.
Yeah, they're cute. This is all our Eels kind of
have different personalities. To ask if.
They have personalities and thisone is like very mild mannered
and calm and just kind of frozenthe dens with the eel or with
the lobsters and we'll let the lobsters kind of crawl over the
eel as they're looking for food.And I'm guessing lobsters are

(19:59):
not a typical prey item for eels.
Most of the time, no, but when lobsters molt, they are really
soft body and at that point thatyou might go out, yeah.
So do you then separate the lobsters out for that time
period so that the other lobsters and the eels don't
bother? We do, yeah.
So when our lobsters molt, we'llkind of scoop them out of the
exhibit and keep them either behind the scenes or in a

(20:22):
protected area of the habitat where nobody's going to mess
with them until they're nice andstrong.
Yeah, it's the best. Do they look weird when they've
melted? They actually look really
similar to me. You can't really.
Tell them I actually want to do a lobster episode.
Maybe we'll have you back on andtalk more about lobster stars
too. Orange, orange, orange, orange.
Yeah, it's all about Orange, Orange and Brooks last episode.
So invested in his story, he hasa new apartment and he.

(20:46):
Looks really great, very happy for him.
He's driving now. Also, he's not your in your
exhibit anymore, so yeah. He was a monster for me, even
happier I was ready to come out.He's Brooke's problem.
Yeah, and he's doing good because he's his own little
bachelor pet up there. Totally complete side note, but
Speaking of Brooke and Heidi, they went on a really exciting
trip earlier this year and they did a little vlog about it.

(21:08):
So I'll link to that in the shownotes we talked about a little
bit. It was for the young of the
year. Yeah, young of the year rockfish
surveys. So we were lucky enough to go up
to Washington state and join some researchers up there to
look for these baby rockfish anddid a ton of scuba diving and
surveying and we found some of these rockfish, which was really

(21:29):
cool. And it just kind of shows how
healthy the habitat is when we see these little babies out
there and gives us an idea of who's going to grow up and be
the big fish on the reef after this.
And will our reefs keep being healthy?
Feel like that's like what everykid?
Dreams of when they're like, I want to be a marine biologist.
They just want to go so diving in the ocean and count.
Fish. We were loving it the whole time

(21:51):
Yeah. We were watching nature
documentaries every night being like, that's us, we're doing
that right now. We were so excited.
Yeah, it's true it. Wasn't true.
It wasn't you guys. You live in every kids dream of
being a marine biologist. Amazing.
OK, so here at the aquarium, what do our eels eat?
Besides soft lobsters, they don't do that.
We stop them from any lobsters. But the eels I work with will

(22:14):
primarily eat fish, maybe a little bit of clam too.
But eels species are all adaptedto have different teeth
depending on what they're eating.
So some eels have more kind of crunchy strong jaws that they
can go after crabs and clams with those hard shells.
Whereas our eels are sisters. They're mostly the more eels

(22:35):
have more Fang like teeth that they use for snatching up their
prey. Here obviously we're preparing
their luxury food for them and hand delivering it.
Strong quality, sustainable seafood that your purchase of
any aquarium ticket or donation goes right back to.
You have that down. Pat, I have to.

(22:56):
So they're eating mostly fish types.
Is it like whatever fish that wehave that, you know, was
prepared for other animals or dothey have specific things that
they prefer and like do they eatherring, capelin, mackerel?
Which things are their? Favorites.
Yeah, I primarily feed herring, capelin and squid, which isn't a
fish, but so that gets in there.That's exactly what our seals
and sea lions eat through the same animal.

(23:18):
Parker does look very he's. Long.
He's 9 feet long. He's a giant Moree.
We figured it out. New species finally found the
giant Moray. It's been Parker the whole time.
He does have Fang like teeth. He doesn't have He does have
fins. Well, actually he doesn't have
fins. He has flippers.
So he might be oh, he's a faker,but he's flippers.

(23:40):
He doesn't have fins, I guess sohis hips are suspicious to me.
Seals hips are fused. He's not He's.
Not no. He's fake anyway.
But does he have favorite foods as well?
He does same with her. Ewens only that's his favorite
food, he won't eat the easily ashis scape.
That Ewells I work with love Herring.
That's their go, too. I feel like it's the fattier
fish and so most animals tend togravitate towards that.

(24:03):
Parker on the other hand, big man, like small fish, so who
knows? But in in terms of what you're
offering the Eels, how do you tell when they have a
preference? My eels are very picky, I'll
just straight up refuse any foodthey don't like.
But that's also kind of a natural behavior for them
because eels in the wild aren't eating super often, and it's
pretty common for California mores to go weeks without

(24:25):
getting a meal and then they'll take down one very large prey
item that will sustain them for a while.
Kind of like a snake, do they? Yeah.
There's only so much room in their body.
I guess it makes sense. I was going to say, do they like
try to swallow, follow that whole and then they just kind of
like live off of that for a while?
Or do they hide it in their den and then they have like
something to munch on for a while?

(24:45):
They'll be eating the whole thing right away, and they've
got some really cool hidden teeth that help them do that.
So our California mores have what's called a pharyngeal jaw,
which is a second set of teeth farther back at the base of
their mouth. And they'll use their front
teeth, those things to grab their prey.
And then those pharyngeal jaws are modified so they kind of

(25:08):
shoot forward and also grab ontotheir food to help pull it back
farther into their mouth. Does that second set of teeth
then like take chunks out and then they can hold something
while like eating it? They are the chewing, not really
chewing, but mostly swallowing it whole.
The pharyngeal jaw might help break it up a little bit, but
it's really just to help grab and pull back.

(25:30):
Yeah, you'll also shake their heads back and forth if a prey
Adam's too large to help break it up.
It's like an alien. Just seeing that I feel like
there is an alien that must got to be a sci-fi movie that has
the second Jaws within it. I kind of think about our
Penguins too, and how they have like a all those weird little
similar, but yeah, exactly, justlike a lot of.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, turtles.

(25:51):
Yeah. Exactly.
Eels are the coolest because there's move and they can shoot
those forward. In their actual teeth, whereas
Penguins is just weird spikes same as turtles which kind of
creeps me out but turns out there's a lot of adaptations to
stop prey from getting away and eels have the coolest one.
Do false eels have a pharyngeal jaw or is that another way you
could tell them apart? So actually most fish have

(26:12):
pharyngeal jaws, but it's just the California mores that have
the mobile ones that are adaptedto shoot forward.
Like, yeah. Parrotfish have a second instead
of teeth, right? Thanks, but.
Whatever, whatever. I just know everything about
pear fish, no big deal. Just a little bit.
You've done a podcast or two. Yeah.
Exactly. I learned.
I learned here. So they're mostly eating the
same fish types that we're feeding to our sails and sea

(26:33):
lions, which is interesting to find out.
And usually when we do our fish prep in the morning, the mammal
staff will prep any capelin, herring or squid.
And then anything that's leftover from the giant flats
that we break out, we will have the Aquarius kind of choose what
they want out of that. And so I imagine that the eels
do get somewhat of a variety in their diet too, based on just
what's available on that day. So that's interesting to hear.

(26:53):
And it is also weird that they eat clams because it does not
feel like their jaws should be strong enough to crunch through
a clamshell right that. Makes sense, yeah.
Are they pretty strong? They are very strong, yes, Yeah.
And it's not our California Morris here that would be eating
those. It'd be other eels that are more
adopted with those different jawshapes.
But these ones can still handle those kind of tougher foods.

(27:16):
What do the garden eels eat? Since they're so tiny, they eat
teeny tiny food and so they mostly get mysid shrimps.
That's what I thought. That's cute.
And are they hunting foraging inthe wild or even in our
exhibits? If you're feeding them the mysid
shrimp, what does their feeding behavior look like?
Yeah, for the garden eels, when you put food scattered in the

(27:36):
water, you'll start to see them poke their heads a little
farther out of the sand and kindof snatch food up that way.
And then our eels, they'll be fed two different ways.
Tropical eels are mostly fed by divers, since there are such
large exhibits, and the divers will take a pair of tongs down
with them and hand deliver the food straight to the eel.

(27:57):
With that, they're very bougie over there.
Yeah. And so those eels will kind of
lunge forward to grab the food and then use those jaws to help
pull it back in. And then the eels that I take
care of in Casino Point eels arevery smart.
So these ones have been trained to come up to the surface, to
their little feeding station andwill come up there and get food
when they're hungry. Sometimes they come up even when

(28:19):
they're not hungry just to hang out.
And I try to feed them and they say no.
Hi, Heidi. Just want to say.
Hi, just saying hi. Do they each have their own
station that they meet you at oris it just that they've
identified there's like a feeding station?
They'll all come up to 1. Mine all have the same feeding
station, right? So I have three eels in there
and sometimes only one will comeup, sometimes they'll all come
up. They all eat on the same day or

(28:40):
just no, just depends on. I prepare food for them three
times a week, but it's kind of ahit or miss if they'll actually
come. It's more normal for them to
come about once a week. Does that target feeding help
you? If you ever needed to collect
them for a procedure or something?
Does that give you a better opportunity to get them out of
the water? Right, exactly.
Especially since the Eels live tucked up in the rock work, it's

(29:01):
kind of hard to catch an eel when it's doing that, so it
really helps make it easier for me and the animal that they come
up on their own and makes it easy to scoop them up without
too much stress on either end. Imagine for like vet care,
that's very important. And so if you were collecting an
eel out, like what frequency do you do sort of exams on the eels
or what other husbandry considerations are there for

(29:22):
daily care of a California Moray?
Yeah, ours is mostly observational, shaking on their
health. We haven't had to pull anybody
up in quite a while luckily, andthey've now been really healthy.
And eels live quite a long time too.
They can live over 30 years or. More.
Wow, I didn't. Realize that, yeah.
And some of our eels are gettingup there in age as well.

(29:43):
I think two older ones in CasinoPoint are at least 25.
I heard that 20 years ago one ofthem did have a pretty
interesting vet procedure where he had potentially a growth
removed from. Him, yeah, yeah.
And so that eel is still with usand doing great and thriving.
And what happened with it was ithad kind of fatty deposit on its

(30:06):
head. And so it looked like this eel
had a really swollen brain. I was just almost wearing a
helmet. He was too smart too.
Smart and stupid, yeah. And so it wasn't really posing
any health risks to the eel, buthaving this build up of
cholesterol sitting on his forehead was just kind of
getting in the way. And it was starting to kind of

(30:28):
roll over and block his eyes, which eels don't have great
eyesight to begin with. So let's not disturb it anymore.
That's the last thing he needs is a tumor.
Blocking his eyesight. Yeah.
So we have our wonderful veterinarian team here that
opted to do a surgery on this eel and was able to put it under
anesthesia and cut out this fatty mass from its head.

(30:51):
And we still have this animal. We do, yes.
And his name is. His Damons Mr. Brain, of course.
Is that because of that, or is that somehow separate from that?
You know, he was named before I started working here, But it
must be connected. Yeah.
And he is pretty recognizable now, too.
After that surgery. He has most eels will have just

(31:13):
like very smooth slope of the head shape going from the tip of
their nose through the body. But he has like almost this L
shape cut out of his forest. Scoop.
Almost. Yeah, he's cute.
There are other Eels California mores names.
So that one is Mr. Brain, and then our other eel, who's around
the same age in there is named Pool Noodle.

(31:34):
And that one is another guest favorite because he'll hang out
kind of dangling at the top of the tank, like scrap himself in
the culp, which is an odd behavior for eels.
I think that's the one that I always see out and people are
like, is he fine? And he's like, I see him do it
every day. So I think he likes just.
He's an extraverted. Eel.
Yeah, yeah. And then we have one younger eel
in that exhibit who's really parody dark green color, and his

(31:57):
name is Oscar the Grouch. And who's the last one that's
with the lobsters? The one with the lobsters.
Our very sweet eel is named Sylvia Eel after the marine
biologist Sylvia Earle. So cool.
Is it a male or female or is it hard to tell with?
Oh yeah, great question. We would probably be able to
tell if we did an ultrasound exam on these animals, but we

(32:19):
haven't had cause to do that yet, so we're just making our
best guesses. So we have talked a little bit
about eels and true eels and fake eels and freshwater eels,
and now how to tell male and female eels apart.
The main question that every single person wants to know the
answer to is do we know anythingabout how eels reproduce?
Yeah. So this is a very common

(32:40):
question and a lot of people sayit's just a huge mystery how
eels reproduce. But this is primarily referring
to freshwater eels. Those ones, I don't know.
I'm a marine scientist. I know it goes on in the salt
water, not in the freshwater. So that's not my job to find out
they can do what they're doing. But our marine eels, we do know
how they reproduce and most of them are broadcast spawners.

(33:02):
So they're meeting up in the water column, broadcasting their
genetic material. And it will mix in the water and
develop into kind of a plankton larva state where it's just a
tiny, tiny, almost microscopic eel will drift around in the
water column for maybe a year ortwo before kind of settling down
into the rock work and growing up.

(33:24):
Have you ever seen a baby eel? Not that small, I've seen them
tide pooling before where they're just, you know, a
handful of inches long and really cute and tiny.
That is cute. I want to see that.
Yeah. And then as they grow up, they
kind of move deeper in the waterand we'll live in the bigger
crevices where they're a little more protected.
Do we do any breeding here at the aquarium?

(33:45):
We don't. And actually breeding in the
cold water is a little bit of a challenge for eels as well.
And I guess our cold water marine eels have a bit of
mystery around them too, becauseit's believed that California
Maury eels don't breed in California and their range is
from like point conception California all the way down to

(34:07):
Baja Mexico. And we think all the breeding is
happening in Mexico, where the water is a little warmer.
Yeah. And then any of the eels up in
this area just kind of drifted up this way with the currents
settled down and are thriving uphere on their own but not
reproducing. Got it.
Do they ever, so we don't know that they like migrate during a
breeding season or do we know? Or do we like ever track eels

(34:30):
and then see that they just stayin California their whole life
and potentially aren't breeding?Like do we know if they migrate
at any? Point, yeah, as far as we know,
at least for the California mores, is that they're not
migrating and they're just kind of ending up where they are,
following the currents and then once they find a spot to settle
down, that's where they're staying.
Fascinating. So there's just like a pair down
there breeding just every potentially every moree eels.

(34:52):
It's like we like it. We're.
They're actually the parents of every other, yeah.
Holding the splits together. Whatever works I guess.
They're doing great work. Exactly, it's working.
I was going to ask, is there areany eels threatened?
Is there any conservation concerns with any eels?
As far as I know, no. But California, more eels are
doing great and thriving, which is a sign that they're a healthy

(35:14):
part of our ecosystems. It's always great when we have a
win for conservation here of a species that's doing well this.
One's doing good. Yeah, yeah.
And they share habitat with someof our other endangered species
like our white abalone and are sunflower sea stars when they
used to be in California. So it's nice to see that at
least one part of that environment is still doing

(35:34):
really well and healthy. With the eels that, you know,
sometimes people go diving and then they'll see an eel in the
rock work and I've heard people describe them as scary or
potentially maybe think that they're going to be aggressive.
I think it's probably because they're sitting there with their
mouth open and they see sharp teeth and people get nervous
about that. Do should people have any fear
of eels in the wild or what is your recommendation of if you

(35:55):
see an eel what should you do? Yeah, I think it's like any wild
animal where as long as you respect their space, everything
is going to be OK. A lot of people are very far on
one end of either Eels are really scary, I don't want
anything to do with them, or eels are adorable.
And I think that part is definitely true.
They are adorable, but basicallyeels are kind of tucked up in

(36:19):
those crevices throughout the day.
So if you're a diver and you seean eel, a good rule to keep in
mind is not stick your hand in any crevices that you can't
can't see in because there couldbe somebody hiding in there and
good. Advice for anywhere you go,
whether it be on land. Or underwater.
Yeah, yeah, no, I don't blame the eels.
If someone stuck their hand intomy home, I wouldn't be too nice

(36:40):
to it either. So they're just defending
themselves. And most eel bites, if they do
occur, is from a human messing with them unfortunately.
What about the behavior between eels?
Is there any social dynamic to them or do they Burrow together?
I know at the aquarium, of course there's probably some
more interaction than there would be potentially in a wild
setting, but what does that looklike for?

(37:00):
Yeah, eels are mostly solitary within their own species.
They kind of prefer to have their own territories, but at
the same time you'll often see them sharing the same holes and
everything. So they're termed solitary, but
I think they're still friends. They have buddies, yeah, Garden
eels are all lined up together like 20 in a row, so those guys
are best friends. And then outside of eels, they

(37:24):
have some cool interactions withother species as well.
Please tell. So our California mores are
mutualistic friends with our redrock shrimp.
And so these cute little shrimp will share a Burrow with an eel
and it's a win win for both. The eel has a little friend
helping to clean up its home. It will even clean the eel's

(37:44):
teeth when it needs it and pull a parasites off of the eel's
body. And then the shrimp is getting a
nice little snack out of it. A little symbiotic relationship.
I love that. Yeah.
Eels and shrimp. Now we know buds.
You're the eel to my shrimp. That's really nice.
I'm going to pull stuff out of your teeth later, OK, And then
eat it. I guess it's the implication bar

(38:06):
earlier. I feel like I don't want that.
Don't feed me that. That's what you said.
OK, so we posted to our Instagram account on Stories.
So if you don't follow us, we'reat Aquarium Pacific.
And we gathered some questions earlier today for Heidi.
And this is my favorite question.
Why are they long? Why not?
Why not? I love that answer.
Are there short eels? Like their body is large, but

(38:29):
they're short. I would say relative to their
size, they're all kind of long and have that shape mostly
because since their fins are allfused together and elongates
their body, they. Wouldn't go very far if they
were short. That's a good answer actually.
Why are they long? They can't swim if they're

(38:49):
short. I have a question, where do they
use the restroom? Yeah.
So they're just like other fish.They have a vent towards the
lateral end of their body. Under kind.
Of like it would. Be their tail.
Yeah. So they still, when you look at
amore, you can kind of see some fins.
They're not just pure tube. They have a little bit of fin
coming off of their body, but it's all kind of 1 long thing.

(39:12):
And you'll see kind of right at the base of that, on the bottom
of the fish, they have a hidden little vent.
I know that you were saying likewhere do they urinate or
defecate from, but the idea thatthey use the.
Restroom. Do they use in the aquarium?
Do they go downstairs? They have their own little I was
trying to. Figure out a polite way to ask.
Where do they poop? Where do they use the restroom

(39:34):
is my favorite question that youasked.
Another question that we got on social media, and I think is a
probably common misconception, is are eels related to snakes?
They are not. Yeah, completely different
groups of animals. Yeah, evolved very separately.
Pretty good example of how animals can end up with similar
shapes and fill potentially similar niches without being the

(39:56):
same. You know, like they didn't
evolve together, but they have very similar body shapes and
somewhat teeth. Yeah, everything's just adapting
to their environments, and a lotof things have similar
characteristics in their environments.
So like both snakes and eels have those kind of point your
heads where they can reach into crevices and find food a little
easier. I can see why we thought they

(40:18):
were related to snakes, but they're pretty different.
Both cool though. Yeah, both very cool.
That's also true. There is a movie, a movie that
is by a large movie company and it's an animated movie about a
redheaded girl that lives underwater and sings.
She have a tale. And she has a tale.
How'd you know? How'd you know?

(40:40):
It's like, you know what movie I'm talking about.
I don't think anyone's seen thismovie.
Probably not, definitely not every person as a child, but in
that movie there are some eels and the poster wants to know are
the eels within that movie? If you happen to know what movie
I'm talking about, a good representation of what eels are
like in the ocean. In general, do you feel like the

(41:00):
like media depiction of eels is fair or similar to how they
actually are? Do they?
Get a bad rap? Yeah.
I feel like yes and no. They, I feel like are
illustrated well. They are long.
They got that down. Yeah.
But they do kind of get a bit ofa bad rap and come off kind of
like snakes is looking a little evil when you know they're just

(41:22):
out there trying to survive likeeverything else but.
To. Be fair, if I have to see witch
I would want eels as my 2 best friends as well.
That's also true. What about their adaptations?
How would you say they have adapted to the environment?
I guess we kind of talked about that with their mucus, with
their just body in general, but is there anything about, yeah,
they really adapted. All about being able to fit into

(41:43):
those crevices. Even their pharyngeal jaw is
related to that. Most fish when they eat will
open their mouths really wide and really quickly and that
creates a vacuum that sucks whatever food item into their
mouth. But since they're in these tiny
crevices, they don't have room to open their mouths like that.
So instead, they've developed the mobile jaw that will come
out and grab the food for them. Do they wrap themselves like

(42:05):
around the rocks that they're hiding in or could you pull and
eel not? I'm not trying to but.
But if you are cute, I want one too.
If you were grabbing them sort of around the middle and it
somehow wasn't biting you, can you pull them out or is their
body sort of like a huge muscle that's wrapped around and
holding the rock structure within?
They are very strong so I doubt you would be able to win against

(42:27):
an EOL trying to pull it out, and they have some really cool
behaviors as well to give them more leverage against the rock
work. They can actually tie their
bodies into knots and have skilled.
Untie their body. Lovely.
Yes, Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, they have several
different knot shapes that they can tie into, including a Figure
8 and a square knot, and they'lluse that to get more leverage to

(42:50):
help pull things into the rocks.They're boy scants, yeah.
I didn't ask this earlier, but what predates or what's their?
What's their? What's?
Going to eat and eat. Yeah, what would eat and eel
would that would that not behavior kind of help deter like
well, I'm not going to fit now. Yeah, they're pretty much top
predators. They're, yeah, the ones keeping
the reef clean and taking care of all any injured prey or

(43:15):
anything. So they're at the top of the
food chain. I'm sure a curious sea lion
might try to eat one. I'm sure it's happened, but for
the most part they're pretty safe in those crops.
Are they pretty? Fast when they can, they be fast
if they need to get away. They're faster than me at least.
Then that's what matters. We would probably be their top
predator and if they can get away from us then they're in
good shame. Yeah, and humans do eat eels,

(43:37):
right? Yeah, they do Unagi.
Yeah, lots of freshwater. Eel right?
I'm pretty sure Unagi freshwater.
Eel. I think so too.
OK, so we had a question and I actually really like this
question. What is an eel looking for in a
habitat or like what makes a good eel habitat or home within
either the ocean or here at the aquarium?
What are they looking for? Yeah, so I talked a lot about

(43:57):
our ocean eels that love those rock crevices and we kind of try
to mimic that in our aquariums here.
And so we'll pile up rocks a lotof times.
I'll be diving and make what I think is the perfect, perfect
cave for an eel and then I'll come back an hour later and it's
like used spotty to push everything out of the way and
rearrange it and it's just hurtsso much.
It doesn't like my architecture skills, but I've found my eels.

(44:21):
Their favorite hidey holes are in tubes and so we'll put PVC
tubes underwater and it's just the perfect eel shaped spot for
them to hang out. Nice and smooth also so they
don't have to worry about jaggededges and stuff hidey holes.
Literally. If you created them, they're
called. Hidey holes, yeah.
That's that's a really good fun,but I didn't think of it.

(44:44):
Interesting. So the eels are picky about
where they sleep and they will choose and they will decide.
They don't like the things that you've made for them.
That sounds like all animals that we have here at the
aquarium. Yeah, we try really hard at
something. And they're like, I don't
actually care about this. At all.
This is wrong actually. Yeah, I could make it better.
Eels in the in their natural habitat, they're just kind of
looking for a safe place to hidethat they can kind of lunge out

(45:06):
and get prey if they needed to, but otherwise retreat to and be
a little bit shy during the night time.
Yeah, they're ambush predators, so their camouflage helps a lot
too, that if they can find somewhere that kind of matches
their color and they can wiggle in there, completely hide off
their bodies and that just kind of keep not an eye but a nose
out on grief. They hunt by scent more.
I was going to ask about their senses.
You mentioned that they don't have great eyesight, but they

(45:28):
have a great sense of smell. They do.
Yeah. So they primarily use smell to
find food and they have two nares which are basically
nostrils on each side of their head.
And so that helps them when theysent food coming from One
Direction on the current, they can tell which naire they're
sensing it from and turn their head towards it.
Do you see them sniffing stuff when you put food in the water?

(45:48):
They like, lift their head. They will kind of like, perk up
a little bit and turn their heads back and forth looking
around for it. Even when I'm feeding my eels.
I mean, to be fair, my eels are also very old, but I'll put the
food right in front of their faces and sometimes they'll
still be like, kind of turning their heads around trying to
find that. Yeah.
They can't some that smells good.

(46:08):
Where is it? I don't know.
It's two inches in front of my face.
Amazing how there's a couple of cave structures in I believe
just in tropical reef that we can sometimes see the eels
hiding out in and someone wantedto know how the eel feels about
the sea turtle sleeping in its cave.
Yeah, I'm not sure who The Cave was originally made for.

(46:31):
It is turtle shaped. The Cave is sea turtle size.
Yeah, I think. I think that eel might have
stolen. That cave, I think we got to ask
the turtle how he feels. But yeah, that's the real.
Question, how does Lou feel about Yeah Eel sleeping in his
cave? I feel like I've seen them side
by side in there too, just like.No buds, Yeah.
Yeah, I'm sure that eel wouldn'tmind sharing.

(46:51):
I'm probably the turtle that's upset about.
It Lou will actually go through and clean the eels teeth and
then the. So.
It's a symbiotic. Relationship between the eels,
it's very unique to the aquarium.
That is not true by the way, please don't take that at face.
I don't understand why are they all dark?
I guess what, what different color patterns do eels come in?

(47:14):
We, I think that one of our listeners has primarily seen
some of our potentially less vibrant species of eels and so
are California. Mores are sort of that kelp
green color, which makes a lot of sense given that they are
found here in California where things are a little bit greenish
and murky sometimes. But I know that some tropical
species are much more brightly colored. 2 questions, one that
the listener there's not asking,are they ever like poisonous or

(47:37):
venomous and that's a warning coloration because that is very
typical with a lot of different species.
And also, what are some of the brighter colored or more special
looking eels that we have? Yeah, as far as I know, we don't
have any venomous eels. They do have bacteria that
covers their teeth. So a lot of people, if they are
unfortunately bitten by an eel, will think that it's, you know,

(48:00):
infected. There was poison in there, but
that's just that bacteria. And that's healthy for the eel,
but not so good for us if we geteaten.
And then for their coloration, there is a huge variety out
there. And like you were saying, those
tropical eels are going to have our brighter colors.
I have to talk about the wolf eel, even though they're not a
real eel. But when they're juveniles, as

(48:20):
babies, they're actually a bright orange color.
They're orange. Yeah.
Yeah, they're. Maybe to mimic worms?
A little bit, yeah. There's a lot of seaweed colors
too that are kind of those brighter popped of color, and so
it just helps them blend in a little bit more with that.
And as they age, they turn to that more dark, muted Gray
color. That kind of like a batfish,

(48:41):
like they start off with really,really dark with that orange
stripe all over them. And then to mimic, I think it is
a type of worm they're trying tomimic.
I just think it's funny to imagine them going from worm
stage to old man stage and they don't ever get like anything
that's interesting. It would make sense for tropical
species that are probably livingon like super brightly colored
coral reef to have all of those beautiful patterns and things

(49:03):
like that. That help.
They are beautiful like I. I love our honeycomb moraids.
Yeah, that one's pretty. They're.
They're gorgeous. Yeah.
It's very similar to birds as well.
Well, where you see a parrot andit's all these bright colors and
you think that's got to be so easy to find in the wild.
But then it blends in really well on its habitat because its
habitat is brightly colored. So same thing for the eels.
Even with our more dark colored eels, there's some variation in

(49:27):
the color and pattern with that.Even with my California mores,
we have some that are really dark, kind of emerald green and
then others that are a lighter almost yellowish green and kind
of polka dotted speckly. Beautiful.
Who's your favorite eel? Sylvia Eel.
Sylvia Eel. She's too sweet.
She's very sweet. She lets the lobsters crawl on

(49:48):
her head. She doesn't have to deal with
Orange Orange anymore. Sure.
Did they ever have any interactions?
They did, yeah. And before we redid our Southern
California exhibits, the old lobster exhibit had both Sylvia
Eel and Oscar the Grouch living in there.
And that's when I first fell in love with Sylvia because she was
so good. She would sit and wait patiently
for me to feed her, whereas Oscar would go around and steal

(50:11):
food from all of the lobsters. That's I eventually had to train
him to come to a feeding stationso he could be a little
separated out from everyone. It's just a Manage Oscar that
you started all that eel. Training.
Sylvia Eel. Now we know.
I know. That's the one that lives in the
lobster exhibit in our SoCal area.
So if you want to see a marine biologist, Eel, she's in there.

(50:32):
Yeah, she's in there. Very cool.
Cool. That was wonderful.
Thank you so much, Heidi, for joining us today.
And I feel like I learned so much about eels.
That was awesome. True.
I didn't know anything about eels before this.
I didn't even think about the fact that none of them have any
sort of fin until you were describing it as like, yeah,
they're just kind of long. There's nothing on them, you
know. Just tubes, very cute tubes,

(50:53):
very cool. That's my big take away for
everyone is that even though they have got little scary teeth
and they might look a little weird at first, they are very
cute and very love full and havecute little faces.
I agree with that. Thanks, Heidi.
Thank you so much. Aquarium of the Pacific is

(51:15):
brought to you by Aquarium of the Pacific, A501-C3 nonprofit
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social media at Aquarium Pacificon TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn. This podcast is produced by
Aaron Lundy and Madeline Walden.Our music is by Andrew Reitsma
and our podcast art is by BrandyKenny.
Special thanks to Cecile Fisher,Anita Vaez, our audio, visual

(51:37):
and education departments, and our amazing podcast guests for
taking time out of their day to talk about the important work
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the support of the Aquarium's donors, members, guests and
supporters. Thanks so much for listening.