Anja Murray: Epic eel journey from Sargasso Sea to Ireland — and back again

And their bodies change from transparent to brown to silver to blend in along their journeys

Common eel (Anguilla anguilla) — travels epic journeys of between 5,000 and 10,000 kilometers to reach Irish rivers

Eels are mysterious animals. A fish that can grow to be more than a metre long and live for several decades, they are at home in every Irish river and lake. 

And yet they aren’t an animal we often see. For aeons, nobody knew how they breed, where they spawn, or what young eels look like. We now know that the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) travels the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean twice during its life, spawning on the far side of the Atlantic, though scientists are still just figuring out the details of eels’ epic migration and enigmatic life cycle.