Treated sewage released into rivers may hamper eel migrations

Discharges from sewage remedy crops into rivers might act as a barrier to migrating fish. European eels (Anguilla anguilla) appear to intentionally keep away from plumes of handled wastewater, in some circumstances delaying their journeys by a number of days.

Sewage remedy creates a posh chemical cocktail – “1000’s and 1000’s of chemical compounds, and we don’t know the precise composition”, says Hendrik Volken Winter at Wageningen College within the Netherlands.

When finding out how hydropower or pumping stations delayed or killed migrating eels, his staff seen that …