More than a million eels caught in Somerset

A million baby eels will be re-homed in Somerset this afternoon in what is described as the biggest ever effort to help endangered eel populations in the UK. The elvers were caught in the River Parrett this week and will be released in a nature reserve.

They need human help because their way is blocked by weirs and gates. When they are grown they will swim back across the Atlantic to breed.

A project to catch a re-home baby eels living in the River Parrett is being hailed a success.

A team of fishermen had been tasked with collecting one million baby eels (known as elvers). They beat the target by 200,000. The final count came in at 1.2 million.

More than a million baby eels have been caught from the River Parrett.

The elvers, as they are called, are trying to swim up the waterways of the Somerset Levels but can't get there themselves.

Their swim is blocked by weirs, dams and other man-made barriers. So a team has been catching the fish downstream and driving them there instead.

Fishermen have been out over the weekend in a project to catch and re-home a million eels or elvers. 500,000 have been rescued from the River Parrett and moved upstream. The operation will continue tonight where fishermen will be hoping to catch and move a million.

A project to catch a million baby eels on the River Parrett, Somerset, in one night gets underway later. Authorised fishermen with hand nets will be used to collect the elvers to move them upstream where they mature.

The eels are an endangered species but experts say that this year favourable conditions mean there are hundreds of millions.