But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids
May 15, 2026 · 23 min · 19 segments
What are eels? And why are some eels electric? We head to Poughkeepsie, New York to learn about eels with Chris Bowser, Hudson River estuary educator with the New York Department of Environmental…
Jane LindholmHostDavid de SantanaGuestJesse BlavakGuest
Kira and Val are students who work with Chris as part of their college studies.
Jesse and his dad Blaise live near Poughkeepsie, and we were all there for one reason.
Chris runs a project every year where people who live along the Hudson River can get involved in monitoring and counting juvenile eel populations.
We think American eels, all of them, hatch somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean.
Many peoples think it's the Sargasso Sea, roughly between Bermuda and Puerto Rico.
So the, if we catch any baby eels today, they will have traveled over 1,500 miles to get here.
So if we have any eels here, they've been on this migration, this journey, a really long time.
We got suited up in big waterproof overalls with boots called waders, and we walked right into the water of the Fallkill Creek.
Chris and his team had set up a trap to catch eels as they traveled from the Hudson into the Fallkill to start swimming upstream.
Kira and Val are students who work with Chris as part of their college studies.
Jesse and his dad Blaise live near Poughkeepsie, and we were all there for one reason.
Chris runs a project every year where people who live along the Hudson River can get involved in monitoring and counting juvenile eel populations.
We think American eels, all of them, hatch somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean.
Many peoples think it's the Sargasso Sea, roughly between Bermuda and Puerto Rico.
So the, if we catch any baby eels today, they will have traveled over 1,500 miles to get here.
So if we have any eels here, they've been on this migration, this journey, a really long time.
We got suited up in big waterproof overalls with boots called waders, and we walked right into the water of the Fallkill Creek.
Chris and his team had set up a trap to catch eels as they traveled from the Hudson into the Fallkill to start swimming upstream.
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