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Throughout their lives, eels make just two migrations, one of which is passive, the other driven by
reproductive motivation.
The passive migration is their distribution from their spawning grounds in the Atlantic to colonise
Europe's freshwater systems, with the reproductive aspect reversing that journey as a onetime only
return to those spawning grounds where they reproduce and die.
This takes place in a slowly rotating slack eddy of the western Atlantic to the east of Florida, south of
Bermuda, and to north of Cuba, known as the Sargasso Sea. It's from this rotation that the ocean current
known as the north Atlantic Drift or Gulf Stream originates.
In the Sargasso, eel eggs are shed during the spring and early summer months at depths of around two
hundred to three hundred fathoms, where on hatching, the larvae maintain that level within the water
column before undergoing a deep lateral body flattening process.
At this stage, they are known as Leptocephali, which was at one time thought to be a completely
different species of fish known as Leptocephalus brevirostris.
As Leptocephali they rise closer to the surface where over the next couple of years they grow
progressively longer as they are slowly carried around by the rotation in an ever increasing radius from
the point where the eggs were initially shed.
The north Atlantic current eventually leaves this rotation at a peripheral tangent. When the Leptocephali
become caught up in this they are carried passively towards northern Europe, the Iberian coast, and
some to the Mediterranean.
On approaching the European land mass at a length of around three inches, a metamorphosis takes place
transforming the deep bodied leaf shaped fish into a miniature transparent replica of its parents. This is
the elver stage, by which time the young eel could be between two and three years old.
Millions of elvers used to enter Europe's river systems via their estuaries under cover of nightfall.
Around the British Isles, this was usually over a couple of sets of big tides during the spring, though the
actual timing is staggered according to latitude, starting towards the end of the year in the Bay of Biscay
and getting as late as April in Scandinavia.
Soon afterwards, and in some cases even before actually running the rivers, a second metamorphosis
takes place caused by the activation of pigment cells which give the tiny transparent elvers their more
typical olive green colouration ready to start their migration upstream.
Actually, not all eels make this leg of the migration. Some, usually males, choose to remain close to or
even in the sea.
Those that do press on upstream face many dangers from predation, netting, and obstacles, navigating
ditches, streams, and even short stretches over-land after dark looking for a more permanent home
where they can grow on to maturity, which for males can take up to twelve years and females as much
as twenty years, at which point the distant Sargasso beckons, bringing with it certain physical changes.
At this stage, colouration becomes more silvery and the gonads begin to grow, as do the eyes for vision
in the dark distant depths. Then, after leaving coastal waters, the jaw begins to weaken and the gut
atrophies or wastes away, both of which point to a cessation of feeding, after which on reaching the
Sargasso Sea, they complete their cycle and die.
Much as many anglers despise eels, nobody I'm sure would wish the current situation upon them, if
only because it is symptomatic of so many other commercially viable species, particularly at sea, and
the live for today sod tomorrow mentality of those who see fish as little more than a commodity to be
used and abused for financial greed.
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