Why are eels so elusive? Well, no one has ever caught an adult male or female mating in the Sargasso Sea. Even stranger is that this species of fish have never been seen giving birth anywhere in the world!
Eels seem to be a very secretive animal with their love lives and reproductive cycle well hidden from humans’ eyes all these years.
Yet there are eels – lots of them. Even though no one knows where they come from, it’s clear that we need to protect their habitats in order for the species to survive and continue thriving.
The journey of American and European eels is remarkable. Over the past century, a consensus has formed that they travel thousands kilometers across the ocean to spawn in Sargasso sea. In this vast, self-contained gyre near Bermuda water is warmer than surroundings as well as saltier which ensures proper conditions for spawning larvae (elvers) who then make their way back home to Europe or America from where they came from when it was time for them to mature into an eel once again!
In other words, eels travel thousands of miles to the mysterious Bermuda triangle and new eels come from that. Other than that, we have no idea how their reproduction systems work.
The eel’s journey remains a complete mystery, according to Melanie Beguer-Pon of Laval University in Quebec. Eels have never been seen spawning there and the first adult was not caught until 100 years ago by Danish researcher Johannes Schmidt after a series of expeditions to the Sargasso sea. We can assume from this that they are traveling somewhere but we don’t know where or how long it will take them as no one has ever witnessed an eel make its way back home so far away from land with such uncertain timing.””
But this extraordinary mission is a matter entirely of inference, first drawn by Danish researcher Johannes Schmidt after a series of expeditions to the Sargasso Sea . No adult eels have ever been caught spawning there.
Despite evidence of spawning, Wickström is skeptical that the Sargasso Sea serves as a breeding ground for eels. “They must spawn there because tiniest larvae are found in area,” he says.
When they reach sexual maturity, European or American eels leave the Sargasso Sea for Europe and North America. They engage in a wriggling orgy of individuals randomly mating with each other while here – this is called panmixia. The resulting larvae mature into transparent “glass” eels before making their way back to river estuaries on either continent where they spend the rest of their lives.
