LAMPREY; SPOTTED LAMPREY; LAMPER; EELSUCKER
Lampreys were esteemed a great delicacy in Europe during the middle ages (historians tell us Henry I of England died of a surfeit of them)
Little is known of the habits of the lampreys while they live in the sea further than that their mode of life centers around a fiercely predaceous nature. Judging from their land-locked relatives and from the occasions on which they have been found fastened to sea fish, they must be extremely destructive to the latter, which they attack by “sucking on” with their wonderfully effective mouths. The lamprey usually fastens to the side of its victim, where it rasps away until it tears through the skin or scales and is able to suck the blood. Its prey sucked dry, it abandons it for another. Probably lampreys are parasites and bloodsuckers pure and simple, for we cannot learn that anything but blood has been found in their stomachs, except fish eggs, of which lampreys are occasionally full.
From Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) online courtesy of MBL/WHOI http://www.gma.org/fogm/Petromyzon_marinus.htm
Good Morning Gloucester 