BY BEN VERDE
We’ve got a bad f-eel-ing
about this.
A mystery man was seen
dumping over 100 live, squirming
eels into the Prospect Park
lake on Sunday night.
Parkgoers say they witnessed
the man dragging two
large trash bags through the
park near the Vanderbilt Street
entrance at around 7:30 pm
when one of the bags split open,
and its greasy contents spilled
out onto the lawn.
“One of them split open
and all these eels were on the
ground,” said Prospect Lefferts
Gardens resident Andrew Orkin,
who witnessed the incident
after a jog. “They were fully
alive, wriggling.”
Witnesses say the mystery
man, who dressed in white
clothes that resembled a cook’s
uniform, began to dump the eels
into the lake, while confused
4 COURIER LIFE, OCT. 2-8, 2020
onlookers questioned him.
“No exaggeration, it had to
be at least 100 eels,” said fi sherman
Dominick Pabon. In a
video taken by Pabon, the man
can be heard saying he bought
the eels from a store and is “rescuing”
them as he dumps them
into the lake.
“I just want to save their
lives!” he shouts.
“You’re killing other life
here! Eels are not supposed to
be here!” Pabon yells back.
Witnesses called the police,
but the man had disappeared
by the time authorities arrived.
Pabon, a Sunset Park resident
who has been fi shing in
the park for 13 years, says the
eels looked like ones he’s seen
in seafood markets, and were
likely saltwater eels, as some
attempted to free themselves
from the freshwater lake.
“They were trying to swim
back out of the lake, it was
crazy,” he said.
Releasing animals into the
park is illegal and dangerous,
according to the Prospect Park
Alliance, the stewards of Brooklyn’s
backyard.
“It is a hazard both to those
animals, and the plants and
wildlife that call the park
home,” said alliance spokesperson
Deborah Kirschner. “The
parks waterways and natural
areas are fragile habitats, and
this can disrupt these naturally
occurring systems, introducing
disease and other pathogens
which can be harmful.”
According to Riverkeeper,
fi nes for illegal dumping in waterways
range from $1,500 to
$10,000 for the fi rst violation,
and not less than $5,000 or more
than $20,000 for each subsequent
violation.
This isn’t the fi rst time a
non-native species has been introduced
to the lake. The abundant
SLIME BALL: One of the many eels abandoned into the lake by the mystery
man. Dominick Pabon
Red Eared Slider turtles
seen in almost every corner of
the lake are an invasive species
introduced to the city by the pet
trade, and Pabon says other illicit
fi sh and eels have been
dumped, and are disrupting the
ecology of the waterway.
“It’s destroying the whole
ecosystem,” he said. “The fi shing
has been getting slower and
slower.”
R-EEL-Y WEIRD
Mystery man spotted illegally dumping
eels into Prospect Park lake
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