Microchips used to follow eels

Conservationists are hoping to gain a new insight into the movement of eels by clipping microchips to them.

The study will monitor how wild native eels use the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Slimbridge, Glos, and when they leave to migrate down the Severn to the ocean to breed.

The chip triggers a tracker reader as eels leave the lakes and water-filled ditches to start their 3,000-mile swim to the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean.

Information gathered will be used to improve access for eels, whose numbers have dwindled.

Millions of infants – called glass eels as they are transparent – hatch in the Sargasso and spend up to three years drifting back to return to the Severn and other rivers where their parents lived. Emma Hutchin, from the trust, said: “Numbers of glass eels returning to the UK have decreased by 95 per cent in the past 40 years and they urgently need our help.”