Sea world and south - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 80

Kelly McColloch with our first successful garden eel collection.
(Photo courtesy Robert S. Kiwala)
Garden eels are one of the most challenging animals to collect. Early
attempts to do so by squirting quinaldine anesthetic down their bur-
rows failed. It may have put them to sleep, but it was practically im-
possible to dig them out of the loose sand. Eels also have a remarkable
ability to swim backward through sand.
We eventually came up with a successful method. It consisted of two
divers going down to the eel colony with three or four sheets of eight-
foot-square clear-polyethylene plastic and two squeeze bottles of
quinaldine. A plastic sheet was carefully spread over an area that had
a large number of eel holes, with the edges tucked under the sand to
keep the sheet down on the bottom. The end result was a low plastic
tent, into which some anesthetic would be squirted. The divers would
then move on and lay out the rest of the plastic sheets in a similar man-
ner. This task pretty much consumed the two divers' air supply, and
they would return to the boat. A second team of two divers would then