When the Somerset Levels flood in winter, their reed-fringed waterways swell into a glinting inland sea – haunting and half forgotten.
Generations ago, these wetlands pulsed with the seasonal arrival of eels: twisting through rhynes – human-made water channels – and ditches in their thousands, caught in baskets, sung about in pubs and paid as rent to Glastonbury Abbey. Today those same waters flow more slowly, more sparsely: once-teeming channels now show only the barest traces of what was here.
Determined to reverse that collapse, the Somerset Eel Recovery Project is weaving together science, folklore and community creativity to bring back not only the eel but a lost sense of local identity.
Its mission is both ecological and emotional: to help restore a critically endangered species while reviving the human stories, songs and names that once made Somerset an eel country.
Vanessa Becker-Hughes, one of the project’s founders, has built partnerships across science, policy and the arts. She runs a growing school programme – 60 eel tanks were installed in local classrooms last year – as well as storytelling events, traditional rope-making workshops and citizen science efforts that test for eel DNA in rivers. “I try to come at it from different angles,” she said. “Sometimes we do science, sometimes we do a river blessing. But it’s all about connection.”
The project has attracted high-profile supporters. Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones singer turned clean water campaigner, has amplified the project’s efforts online, calling it “a vital act of ecological and cultural restoration”.
The celebrity chef and sustainability advocate Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recently became an official “eel legend” – the tongue-in-cheek name given to some fundraisers who help pay for habitat work and education.
“Eels have fascinated me for a long time,” he said. “I have gone from poacher to gamekeeper: cooking them to realising how important it is to protect these extraordinary, charismatic creatures. They are a keystone species with a remarkable natural history, that deserves our respect and our custodianship.”
Across Europe, the population of the European eel has dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s. Between 1980 and 2009, eel numbers in Somerset’s Bridgwater Bay – once a thriving gateway for glass eels – dropped by 99%.
The causes are multiple and connected: overfishing, pollution, hydrological infrastructure blocking migration, climate-driven shifts and the spread of a parasitic nematode damaging the eels’ swim bladders.
Becker-Hughes’ blend of wonder and urgency fuels her determination. She believes that rebuilding our lost relationship with eels means rekindling communal memory through shared rituals and skills.
“We make straw ropes, which we put over barriers. They get wet and the little glass eels use them to climb up and over. But more than that – it gets people to visit these weirs. They notice the water. They count the eels. They start to care,” she said.
Andrew Kerr, the chair of the Sustainable Eel Group, says eels once shaped placenames, customs and livelihoods. He believes it is crucial that we rebuild our lost relationship with them. “If we lose the eel, we lose a sense of our identity. We forget the songs. We forget what this landscape was,” he said.
Becker-Hughes said all is not yet lost. “Each spring tide still brings new arrivals,” she said. “The eel is not just a ghost of the past – it is a key to unlocking something vital in the present.”
With every story told, every rope woven and every child watching a glass eel wriggle up a straw ladder, she believes, a small restoration of species, memory and care takes place.
