Anguillidae

European eel

Anguilla anguilla

Six thousand kilometers to the Sargasso Sea

• Brown
• Gray
• Silver
• Cross-climate
• Temperate
• Tropical
• Estuary
• Globally widespread
• Freshwater fish
• Anguilliform
• Large
• Temperate fish

Enshrouded in centuries of biological mystery and undertaking one of the most astonishing transoceanic migrations in the natural world, the European eel is a catadromous teleost native to the waterways of Europe and North Africa. Its continuous dorsal, caudal, and anal fins form a single supple ribbon around a serpentine, mucous-sheathed body with an undershot lower jaw. During its continental growth phase (yellow eel), it presents an olive-green to yellowish-brown back with a yellowish belly; as sexual maturation nears, it transforms into a silver eel, developing dark metallic bronze dorsal skin, gleaming silver flanks, and dramatically enlarged eyes for oceanic navigation. Native across rivers, lakes, and estuaries draining into the eastern North Atlantic and Mediterranean, adults travel thousands of nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in the deep, warm waters of the Sargasso Sea. Tiny transparent leaf-like leptocephalus larvae drift on Gulf Stream currents for up to three years before metamorphosing into glass eels entering European estuaries. Critically Endangered due to dams and overfishing, maximum recorded length attains one hundred and thirty-three centimetres.

Sources: FishBase & IUCN — European Eel, Anguilla anguilla