Critically EndangeredEuropean Eel
Anguilla anguilla
62 countries4 parks89 dive sites
Species group · Bony fish
WAnimals has 6 species of eel, spread across 4 families (Anguillidae, Congridae, Gymnotidae, Ophichthidae).
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
2 species in this group are in a threatened category according to the IUCN.
Recorded in 165 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
It migrates thousands of kilometres from Europe's rivers to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die.
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The moment of spawning has never been directly observed in the wild.
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In captivity, unable to migrate, it can live several decades longer than it otherwise would.
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Like its European relative, it travels thousands of kilometres to the Sargasso Sea to breed once and then die.
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The entire species breeds in a single place: the Sargasso Sea. It is panmictic — that is, it functions as a single breeding population in which any individual can mate with any other, whether from Greenland or from Venezuela.
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The larvae, called leptocephali, are transparent and shaped like a willow leaf, and drift with the currents for up to a year before reaching the coast.
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It lives buried in the sand in colonies that sway like a garden of plants.
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It never leaves its burrow: it builds the tube by secreting a mucus that hardens the sand and, at any danger, withdraws inside in an instant.
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Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 6.
From Spotted Garden Eel
