Covered in slippery goo, this snake-bodied fish is surprisingly agile and elusive. The eel walks discreetly through the murky depths with a reputation as a scavenger and is considered the most dangerous creature – the highest level of threat.
According to “BBC News Brazil”, the eel “already collects tax in the UK, feeds people and animals in Europe and North Africa and supports one of the few commercial freshwater fisheries in this part of the world”.
But, he adds, “The most intriguing thing has always been its origin. After all, where do they come from? This question is the mystery of the eel, which has fascinated naturalists throughout history.
Aristotle, Pliny, Aldrovandi and even Sigmund Freud tried to explain the simple existence of an animal that did not reproduce. Each of them proposed a plan including spontaneous generation.
“BBC News Brazil” explains that the main breakthrough in solving this puzzle came from the efforts and dedication of the Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt, who in the early years of the 20th century was looking for the origin of European eels.
At the end of the 19th century, the Italian zoologist Giovanni Grassi discovered that some small, transparent, leaf-shaped marine fishes called Leptocephalus brevirostris were actually young forms of eels, which we now call Leptocephalus larvae. .
“When they approach the European coast, the larvae transform into eels. In this form, they penetrate rivers and swamps,” explains the news website, adding that Grassi’s discovery “made it clear that eels come from the sea. But the sea is much bigger”.
Schmidt published his work in 1923, and since then “we have emphasized the breeding of eels in the Sargasso Sea”.
But the eel is currently facing “population collapse”. Since 1980, its population has declined by more than 95%. Today, the eel is “considered an endangered species – very high threat level,” the website explains.
According to the same source, in the Iberian Peninsula, the eel has lost 85% of the territory it historically occupied due to the “barrier effect of dams”. Today, it seems strange that the Spaniards fished for eels in the areas of Valencia, Soria or Albacete, but this activity was common before the proliferation of dams.
When the dams allow the eels to go upstream, the effect is “even worse, because the journey back to the sea often involves passing electricity-generating turbines, with little chance of survival”, “BBC News Brazil” underlines.
The site adds that eel fishing is a century-old industry, but its commercial exploitation is more recent. Eel fishing in the Guadalquivir River in Spain began in the 1970s and may have resulted in “strong overexploitation of the species”.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) proposed on November 3, from 2023, a complete ban on fishing of eels in all their habitats, in all life stages and for any purpose.
“It is vital that Europe’s regional, national and continental institutions strictly enforce this ban.”
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