Sand Eel or Sandeel is the common name used for a considerable number of species of fish. Most of them are sea fish of the generaHyperoplus (greater sandeels), Gymnammodytes or Ammodytes. Many species are found off the western coasts of Europe from Spain to Scotland, and in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas.
The three genera listed above all fall within the family Ammodytidae, the sandlances. Members of these genera found in other oceans are not usually called Sand Eels, and species from other parts of the world that are known as sandeels are usually less closely related. None of the Sand Eels are related to the true eels.
Sandeels are an important food source for diving birds, including puffins and shags. Traditionally they have been little exploited for human food, but increasing fishing of them is thought to be causing problems for some of their natural predators especially the auks which take them in deeper water.
Sandeels destroy a great quantity of fry and other small creatures, such as the lancelet (Amphioxus), which lives in similar localities.
The eggs of sand-eels are small, heavier than sea-water and slightly adhesive: they are scattered among the grains of sand in which the fishes live, and the larvae and young at various stages of growth may be taken with the row-net in sandy bays in summer.
Sand-eels are common in the N. Atlantic; a species scarcely distinct from the European common sand-launce occurs on the Pacific side of N. America, another on the E. coast of S. Africa.
The sandeel is a slender fish, its body about one-tenth as deep as it is long (not, counting caudal fin), with long head and sharply pointed nose, wide gill openings, and large mouth with the lower jaw projecting far beyond the upper.
Sandeels are found chiefly along sandy foreshores, also over the shoaler parts of the offshore fishing banks; they are seldom seen off rocky parts of the coast, or over muddy bottoms in deep water.
Sandeels' noses are so sharp that when they are swallowed by cod, and perhaps by other fish, they sometimes work right through the stomachs and into the body cavities of their captors, to become encysted in the body wall.
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