#splendid garden eel
Brought to you by a marine biologist and a splendid fellow…
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Man, fish are so crazy diverse that Pocket Camp could do a tourney every week and they still wouldn’t get through all of them for almost 200 years at the rate they’re going (3 per tourney, max). But, of course, they’re going to choose to feature the ones people can go see in an aquarium or while snorkeling on a reef first. So, today, we will talk about such a creature - the Splendid Garden Eel.
This guy showed up for a Special Goals Event called Surprise Eel Goals in July 2021.
The Splendid Garden Eel is a true eel as part of Order Anguilliformes. Like I’ve probably mentioned a bunch during this series, there are a lot of fish that *look* like eels, and are *called* eels, but if they aren’t in Anguilliformes, they aren’t true eels. Within this Order are the fish of Congridae that include conger eels and garden eels, like our guy today and his cousin we covered during ACNH, the Spotted Garden Eel. The Splendid is widespread across the Pacific tropics, including the southern archipelagos of Japan and south to The Philippines. You can also often find this and other garden eels quite regularly at an aquarium, since they’re so very peculiar and active.
By Azoreg at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4381657
Splendids like to live in groups from three to a thousand! Once they find a spot on the sand they like as settling juveniles, they make their little burrow - no more than a little hole in the ground - a they just live there unless they are chased out or, y’know, eaten. But there is another important reason they may move to a new burrow and that’s to be closer to a potential mate. Males will bite each other as they fight for a lady’s affections, and whoever wins that display gets the spoils. When they aren’t looking for love, they are looking for food (aren’t we all?) Splendid Garden Eels eat plankton floating by on the current, so the entire colony will be seen facing the same way into the current to catch food. Seems pretty weird then that you catch this thing on rod and reel in ACPC, but I guess that’s the limitations of video games.
And there you have it! Fascinating stuff, no?
