Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A seven-foot long, 131-pound conger eel caught by fishermen in the UK on Thursday fell just short of breaking the British record for the largest creature of its kind.
The eel, which according to BBC News was captured off the coast of Devon in the southwestern part of England, was accidentally hauled in by the nets of a trawler. The creature was dead by the time it was brought back on shore, and was later sold for the sum of £40 (nearly $63).
According to LiveScience, the eel was believed to weigh between 155 and 160 pounds (70 kg to 73 kg) before it was gutted at Plymouth Fisheries, and weighed 131 pounds afterwards. The record for a UK line-caught conger eel is 133 pounds, four ounces, the website added, leading Pete Bromley, manager of Plymouth Fisheries, to tell BBC News that it was just “a very unlucky big fish.”
Not a record-setter, but still an unusual find
The fisherman (unsurprisingly) took pictures that made the eel appear to be much larger than reality. However, Bromley said that those pictures were deceptive and that the conger eel was only about seven feet (2.1 m) long.
Nonetheless, he told BBC that it was still “very large and very unusual for our market. Conger normally live in deep water wrecks, so it is unusual to catch them on open ground.” He continued, “But it is a very impressive fish and would have made any anglers’ day.”
BBC News added that these eels are typically found hiding among the many wrecks which litter the southwestern regions of the UK, or on reefs and rocky ground. Though they tend to be large (reaching sizes of nearly 10 feet in length) and powerful, they are not strong swimmers. Congers are primarily nocturnal and will eat most other types of seafood, the UK news outlet added.
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments