29th April: Eel Day

The Saturday of the May Bank Holiday weekend is Ely Day, also known as Eel Day. So here are ten facts you might not know about eels.

1. The name of the city of Ely derives from the old Northumbrian word for "district of eels", which is why these fish are celebrated on the May Bank Holiday weekend. Features of the festival include a parade, an eel throwing contest (no eels are, or ever been harmed during this contest. Toy eels are used, and before that, tights stuffed with Socks), and a town criers competition. Couples getting married on this day are named "King and Queen of the Eels". The bride is expected to take part in the parade, wearing a crown of live eels, which, according to legend, bring luck to a marriage. The City of Ely will send the couple a hamper of eels every year on their anniversary.
2. Eels are long fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes. Electric eels and spiny eels do not belong to this order and are therefore not true eels.
3. Eels can live for about 85 years.
4. They range in length from 5 cm (2.0 in) in the one-jawed eel (Monognathus ahlstromi) to 4 m (13 ft) in the slender giant moray. Adults range in weight from 30 g (1.1 oz) to well over 25 kg (55 lb) in the European conger.
5. They don't have pelvic fins, and many species also lack pectoral fins.
6. The collective noun for a group of eels is a swarm, bed or fry.
7. A young eel is called an elver. This name is thought to come from the time in the spring when elvers would swim upstream along the River Thames, a time once called "Eel fare". Elver is thought to have been a corruption of this.
8. The first stage in the life of an eel is a transparent, flat larval form called leptocephali. They live in shallow seas and eat particles which float in the water. They grow into glass eels, and finally the elvers who swim upstream, often climbing up anything that gets in their way, like dams or waterfalls.
9. Most eel species are nocturnal.
10. Eel blood is toxic to humans, but cooking and the digestive process destroy the toxin.

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