David Righton

speaker

154 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2025 last heard 26 Nov

David Righton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Infinite Monkey Cage · What’s the deal with eels? – Lucy Porter, David Righton and Caroline Durif · 26 Nov 2025 podcast

Yes, or even older.

And this is one of the challenges in understanding eel population dynamics.

Because the relationship between the age of the eels leaving...

And the larvae that then come back is very, very difficult to untangle, what we call the stock recruitment relationships.

So how do they migrate?

Well, it's not quite, no.

There are still some fisheries for eels, but it's now highly regulated because the European eel is classified as critically endangered.

The eel is probably the most widely distributed fish in Europe.

Any country with a coastline will have eels within its borders.

And so it used to be obviously one of the most common fish that people would encounter if it's in every river, every stream and so on.

And that's why the Bishop of Ely was receiving 80,000 eels a year as payment.

And this was a common thing for lords of the manor to be paid by their servants in sticks of eels.

So why are they endangered?

If you were to sort of...

put together a blueprint, if you like, or a design plan for a fish species that would be impacted by the various challenges of the Anthropocene, the age in which we live, the eel would probably be it.

It's a long-lived species that reproduces only once, so it can bioaccumulate pollutants, for example, which can be damaging the risk of disease.

Obviously, the risk of encountering disease or parasites.

It lives in habitat that is now highly modified, in which there are many barriers, dams, power stations and so on.

And it has a life stage in its larval form, which could be impacted by, for example, climate change and changes in ocean currents, but also in its adult and migratory form, which can also be impacted.

And, of course, there is the big issue of fishing and fishing rates as well, which can impact upon population sizes.

Showing 61–80 of 154 · page 4 of 8