SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) – The American eel is wiggling its way toward special protection as an endangered species, a status its advocates say is desperately needed to stem the creature’s decline.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that it will conduct an in-depth review of the fish to determine whether it should join the ranks of the spotted owl and bald eagle. The process will take at least a year.

Tim Watts hopes that won’t be too long.

Watts, who petitioned the government late last year to protect the western hemisphere’s only freshwater eel, says he’s been noticing a steep decline in the number of eels that swim through the Weweantic River near his home in Middleboro.

“This spring there weren’t as many as there were in past years,” he said. “Exactly what that means is hard to tell, but it doesn’t look good.”

Watts, a janitor who grew up fishing in Massachusetts waters, noticed the plight of the eel a few years ago when he saw a pile of them stuck at the bottom of a dam. After doing some research with his brother, Doug, who lives in Augusta, Maine, the two came up with enough reasons to believe that the eels were in jeopardy.

American eels only spawn in the Sargasso Sea, an expanse of warm, algae-filled water east of Bermuda. The young are carried by currents to the mouths of rivers from South America to Greenland, where they swim upstream into fresh water. Later in life, the fish find their way back to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die.

The Watts brothers found that getting past dams wasn’t just a problem in the Weweantic River.

“I’m pleased the government is doing this status review to see if the eels should be an endangered species,” Tim Watts said. “But it’s a bit scary that they feel the stocks are in serious enough decline that they need to look into it like this.”

Under the status review, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service will request information from other federal agencies, countries where eels are sold as food or bait, state officials, commercial fisheries and the public for input on the American eel.

“Now we go on to find the big picture,” said Heather Bell, a senior fisheries biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We’ll be bringing together researchers and experts and getting their input. Eventually we will complete a status review document, and from that document, a decision on whether to list the American eel as an endangered species will be made.”

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