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Where European eels commencement and extremity their lives was agelong a mystery, but an audacious expedition has yet revealed the past details of their unthinkable migration
Life 16 January 2023
Mathieu Foulquie/Biosphoto/Minden Pictures
RIGHT now, millions of sinuous, silvery food are swimming determinedly crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They are snake-like, much than a metre agelong and person huge, bulbous eyes. They near their homes successful Europe successful precocious autumn and person been navigating westwards ever since, often swimming against the currents that erstwhile carried them the different way. They question unsocial astatine a languid pace, ne'er stopping to rest. By nighttime they are adjacent the surface; by time successful the depths. Their travel volition instrumentality much than a year. Many won’t marque it. But those that bash person a reward awaiting them: enactment and decease successful the Sargasso Sea.
This is the eventual goal, and fate, of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), a singular and enigmatic taxon that has nourished the quality imagination, and belly, for millennia. Their beingness rhythm is fascinating and their last journey, the details of which person lone precocious been discovered, is jaw-dropping. “This is simply a taxon which is notoriously hard to understand,” says eel adept Jack Wootton of the Forth Rivers Trust successful Edinburgh, UK. What we bash cognize for definite is that the European eel is critically endangered and needs assistance to recover, oregon woe betide it and the ecosystems it nourishes.
This taxon starts beingness acold from Europe successful the Sargasso Sea, a portion successful the occidental Atlantic that is defined by the 4 water currents that signifier its boundaries. From December to May big eels spawn there, and their larvae – known arsenic leptocephali – commencement a agelong travel to Europe and North Africa. They are mostly carried by the prevailing currents, which resistance connected …
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