Just got some awesome pics from my cool Fish Researcher friend Jonathan who rears Wolf Eels!
I won’t bother you with specifics that you could just Google. But to make it easier, here’s a link to their Wikipedia page if you want to learn a little more about these special creatures.
These babies were born 107 days ago and it feels like only yesterday when I helped “massage” their egg mass into the world. If you’ve never massaged an egg mass of any sort, it’s kinda like popping bubble wrap with a tiny wriggly surprise in the middle of each bubble. Pretty cool!
It’s been fascinating to watch them grow (he has them on display at the Windows on Research desk @ Vancouver Aquarium) and I hope to know them when they are full grown beasts (growing up to 8ft in length!)
Facts from Jonathan:
They had visible teeth less than a month after hatching. When feeding I can feel the teeth but they’re not strong enough to break skin (yet). In the picture, they’re eating thawed whole krill and sometimes they’ll fight over a piece tug of war style. I have pellet food but they like the shrimp better and they attack it like it’s swimming prey.
I’m feeding them once per hour while I am in the lab. The ones we have shipped to Qualicum are being fed 24h/day with a feeding robot and they are 50% bigger than these. At the beginning they’d get full of pellets and pass out on the bottom; now they don’t get full, they just keep eating non stop. A lot of them stay on the surface waiting for someone to walk by the tank and they’ll poke their heads out of the water looking for food.
My last measurement was 252mm, 6.21g. loooong eel.
Here’s a grown buddy found on RockfishDivers:
PHOTO SOURCES: Jonathan Wong (3); RockfishDivers
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