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Animal profile
Anguilla anguilla
The European eel is a long snake-bodied catadromous fish that grows in fresh and brackish water and migrates to the open ocean to spawn. Its transparent leaf-shaped larvae drift back across the Atlantic. Its life cycle was a puzzle for well over two thousand years.
The European eel's breeding grounds in the Sargasso Sea were inferred from larval sizes a century ago, but not until 2022 did satellite tags follow adult eels the whole way there.
The Sargasso Sea spawning ground was inferred a century ago from the sizes of drifting larvae, not from seeing eggs laid. Satellite tagging has now tracked adults toward the area, but a wild European eel spawning has still never been directly observed.