Eels expedition to the Azores
The eel has been a bit better in recent years, but the fish is still one of the endangered species. Their number has declined by 90% in the Netherlands. The glass eel that enters the Netherlands and other European countries spreads across the inland waterways where they grow up to become mature eel (corpse). That takes 5 to 15 years. When the eel gets sexually mature, they retract through rivers and canals to the coast from where they start the journey to the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean where they reproduce — a journey of nearly 6,000 km! They only do this once in their lives, because after spawning the fish die. The young larvae swim with the sea streams to Europe and North Africa, where they enter like glass nematodes. Here the cycle starts again.
The Azores are the westernmost range of the European eel and have fast-flowing rivers full of waterfalls. How to bridge eels that waterfalls? Blogger Pieterjan Verhelst went to the Azores and figured it out.
