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Puna has choke eels around the coast.
#1
Yesterday I took a couple of my older boys fishing. We were blessed with a gorgeous day and what looked like ideal surfing conditions. The winds were off shore and the waves had a storm type size to them. We walked down the coast to our favorite fishing area, along the way we noticed a few eels within the tide pools.
Once we reached our destination we knew the fishing was going to be a challenge as the ocean was unpredictable with some very large sets. We did manage to catch about a dozen reef fish before we starting catching eels. We caught 8 very large eels and a few smaller ones, they were everywhere. They are very difficult to take out of the water and even more difficult to unhook them. We did catch and release most of them, a few died which we would then throw them back in for chum. That's when we saw even larger eels swim in and grab these 3-4 foot little eels. The feeding of these eels with other eels was indeed incredible to watch.
My boys and I had a lot of fun all afternoon catching these aggressive eels. This made us think how important the eel really is around our coast as they ate everything we through in. The eel is constantly cleaning our tide pools around our coastline, I don't know of anything else that cleans our waters any better than these eels.
Anyone have any good pictures or stories of these beautiful eels we have along the coast? The skin from eel I heard has been used for different things, can these eels be eaten and if so how would you prepare a 6 foot brown, grey, or green eel?. Anyway we felt bad about the few eels that we had killed until we saw them get eaten by the even larger eels, hope it's not bad luck to catch or kill the eel.
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#2
Eels are popular in British cooking, and I think Japanese as well.
Lots of hits on a google search for "eel recipe". Switch to image search for a visual treat!

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#3
I would bet they were Moray eels. I believe there are several eel species in the water there but maybe only the Moray in the color and location you describe. This is just my opinion - I'm not a marine biologist and I haven't stayed at a Holiday Inn in some time!
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#4
the common dark colored eel here is very unpalatable. at least not to this human's taste. after accidentally catching them similar to how you describe, i had to try once to see for myself, despite what i had always heard. what i had heard was true. haha

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#5
Japanese love unagi (eels), also said to have "stamina-giving" properties, so if your wife is feeding it to you, well, use your imagination! [:I]

It's a bit oily for my taste, but delicious when prepared properly.

For more on Japanese unagi: http://www.bento.com/rf_unagi.html
Tim

A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions--Confucius
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#6
punafish, ...unagi is indeed delicious! but beware, the common dark one here does not taste like that ono variety served in Nippon.
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#7
I suspected as such, thanks for cluing me in PM2!

The Japanese variety as described by wikipedia, "Like all the eels of the genus Anguilla and the family Anguillidae, it is catadromous, meaning it spawns in the sea but lives parts of its life in freshwater."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_eel



Tim

A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions--Confucius
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#8
i'm certainly no eel expert, just going by what i had always heard from old timers and then reinforced with what i found by eventually giving the common one a go myself about 10+ years ago. looked up a filipino recipe in that case. our conclusion after several tentative bites: "tastes like ....eel. >shudder<". from what i read now, sounds like the moray eel may hold added risk for Ciguatera poisoning as well. i have become increasingly cautious about Ciquatera.

the white eel here is the prime one to eat.

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#9
Hey guys great feed back on our local eels. Some of these Moray eels were over 6 feet in length. You might have to BBQ them or emu style cause no pot or pan we got is going to work for these monsters from the ocean. Felt as if it may have been wrong or bad karma to catch and kill a few of these eels. My son took a pretty good fall during the excursion, we usually return unscathed but we usually don't catch or kill the eel.
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#10
my guess is the fall and catching eels was entirely coincidental.

but yeah, i can imagine the feeling of bad karma coming from moray eel on a line. remember the cooler banging around like crazy after throwing the one in there. did feel a little bad after, as it didn't end up as a good food source.
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