Eel

Anguillid eels (genus Anguilla, about 19 species and subspecies) connect mountain streams, lowland rivers, wetlands, estuaries and the open ocean across one lifetime. This note gathers evidence toward treating eels as agents, engineers, witnesses, ambassadors and co-designers. Biological and ecological sciences mostly frame eels as stocks, indicators and study systems, while traditional knowledges frame them through particular relations of kinship, food, story and law. The sections below draw on both, add design-oriented readings, table interventions of every kind and flag where forms of knowing fail to talk to each other. Perspectives remain plural and sometimes conflict. Each top-level section is self-contained so that it can later become a subnote.

Related Notes

• Fish, Water, Animal
• Eel Names and Languages for standard, scientific, vernacular and Indigenous names, life stages, etymology and place names
• Eel Project, Reading List, Eel Capabilities: Student Brief
• Eel Leadership, Eel Chapter, What Is Eel (Private)
• Collective Memory, Culture, Connectivity, Migration
• Agency, Decision Making, Leadership, Participation, Representation
• Participatory Design, Multispecies Design, More-than-Human Participation (Review), Restoration
• Critical Animal Studies, Animal Studies, Sentience Book Project, Sentience
• Food, Indigenous, Colonialism, Heritage, Political Ontology
• Ignorance, Bias, Uncertainty, Redundancy, Plurivers, Justice
• Sensory Ecology, Nonhuman Capabilities, Interspecies Injustice
• Capabilities, Historical Ecology, Environmental History, Data Acquisition
• Embassy of the North Sea

Interesting Facts

A pool for writing and presentations. Each fact links to the section that holds its source.

• Japanese eels can climb a 46 m natural waterfall. Climbing and Overland Movement
• Eels have been recorded at 925 m altitude in Switzerland. Climbing and Overland Movement
• Polynesian eels in Vanuatu likely passed the 120 m Siri Falls as elvers. Climbing and Overland Movement
• Elvers move around the 140 m Warragamba Dam near Sydney. Climbing and Overland Movement
• Eels travel overland during rain. When a thunderstorm near Ely ended early, a farmer found dead eels across his field. Climbing and Overland Movement
• An eel's slime can keep its skin moist enough to survive a couple of days on land. Climbing and Overland Movement
• European eels migrate 5,000 to 10,000 km to the Sargasso Sea and spawn across a region about 2,000 km wide. Migration
• Nobody has seen anguillid eels spawn, and nobody has sampled eggs or spawning adults in the Sargasso Sea. Keepers of Uncertainty
• Aristotle believed eels came from earthworms that emerged from mud, and the young Sigmund Freud dissected hundreds of eels in a failed search for their testes. Keepers of Uncertainty
• European eels swim four to six times more efficiently than salmonids. Migration
• Migrating eels dive to 500 to 800 m by day and rise to 100 to 400 m at night. Migration
• Marine predators ended at least about 30% of tracked short-finned eel migrations. Predators and Prey
• "Freshwater eel" is a misnomer: some anguillids never enter fresh water. Taxonomy, Evolution and Distribution
• Electric eels are not true eels. They belong to the knifefish family. Taxonomy, Evolution and Distribution
• Seven tropical eel species have stayed distinct for up to 10 million years despite hybridisation. Evolution
• Long spawning migrations may be a relic of deep-ocean ancestry. Evolution
• Sex in American eels appears to depend on environmental conditions. Agents and Decision-Makers
• European eels across Europe and North Africa share one gene pool and adapt through plasticity. Agents and Decision-Makers
• American eels build burrows with up to five openings and breathe while hidden in sediment. Ecosystem Engineering, Niche Construction and Habitat Modification
• Eels host the larvae of five of the six most widespread European freshwater mussel species tested. Coevolution and Mutualisms
• Glass eels are attracted to the scent of the previous year's elvers. Sociality
• Thames eels may have lost the culture of going upstream. Collective Memory
• Legends tell of a 155-year-old eel in a Swedish well, and New Zealand longfins may live more than 100 years. Longevity
• Gunditjmara know that kooyang have started their journey downstream when the wattles bloom. Australia
• A Gunditjmara fish trap at Lake Condah is at least 6,600 years old, and an eel-containment dam was added 300 to 500 years ago. Long View
• Neanderthals and other Homo species ate eels in Andalusia between about 500,000 and 45,000 years ago. Long View
• Roman elites kept pet eel-like "murenae", adorned them with jewellery and wept when they died. Long View
• Eel-rents appear more often in the Domesday survey than renders of corn, and one marsh owed King William 1,000 eels a year. Long View
• The name of Baba-Yaga shares a root with the Latin anguis and anguilla. Names, Myths and Stories
• Te reo Māori has over 100 tribal names for freshwater eels, describing their colours and sizes. Eel Names and Languages
• Algonquin people shun harvesting part-grown eels "the size and colour of a water snake", which they call minàshkadjosh. Eel Names and Languages
• The Anishinaabemowin word for eel, pimizi, may derive from a word for grease, after the eel's fat. Eel Names and Languages
• In Fiji, tautaubale names an eel reputed to crawl on land. Eel Names and Languages
• The Polynesian word tuna reconstructs to Proto-Austronesian, and on Nukuoro its reflex duna means mosquito larvae. Eel Names and Languages
• Melbourne's Webb Bridge is locally known as Eel Trap Bridge. Eel Names and Languages
• Ngāti Kuru-mokihi built whare tuna, shelters in the water that eels entered of their own accord. Eel Names and Languages
• The Whanganui River held more than 350 eel weirs in the 1880s, and settlers removed almost all of them by 1900. Eel Names and Languages
• A Darug eel engraving on the Dyarubbin mirrors the shape of the river. Governors, Kin and Relations
• In 2012 Japan consumed about 70% of the world's eels. Japan
• A pound of elvers from Maine can fetch $3,000 or more on the black market. Trafficking, Legality and Harm
• East Asian imports of live American eel fry rose from 2 t in 2004 to 157 t in 2022. Fishing, Aquaculture and Trade
• The 2018 Japanese glass eel harvest across East Asia collapsed to 21.52 t. Fishing, Aquaculture and Trade
• A systematic review of fish sentience found only three relevant papers on eels. Welfare, Stress and Pain
• None of ten recent eel-science reviews uses the word "sentience". Knowledges Not Talking to Each Other
• Only 37% of the world's long rivers remain highly connected over their whole length. Human Impact
• European eel recruitment fell by 95% since the 1980s, and the western Baltic population by 98% since 1980. Keepers of Uncertainty, Long View
• Cameras and eDNA found no eels on a Melbourne campus that sits on an old eel route, and the urban legend persists. Eels of Elizabeth Street in Melbourne

Eels as Active Subjects

This section indexes roles that eels play in more-than-human worlds. The roles overlap, and the evidence for each sits partly in the topical sections further down. Cf. the role list in Eel Leadership: witnesses, ambassadors, engineers, designers, coordinators, strategists.

Agents and Decision-Makers

• Eels behave as individuals. In European eels, individual migratory behaviour stems from a syndrome that links cognition, behaviour, physiology and life history.1
• Silver eels from the Narva River that had started their migration returned from the sea to their river of origin after a false start.2
• Short-finned eels in a south-eastern Australian river complicate the assumption that seaward migration is rapid and direct once it starts, and some showed extended estuarine residence. Over five years, 23 of 97 acoustically tagged yellow-phase eels moved from fresh water into the estuary, while the rest stayed in fresh water. Eels moved mostly at night and entered the estuary throughout the year, more often in summer and after high river flows.3
• At Lake Condah, larger short-finned eels in better condition were more likely to leave the wetland. Migration coincided with higher water levels and flows, falling water temperatures and darker moon phases. It peaked in spring, unlike the autumn migration typical of other temperate anguillids, and the authors suggest that these eels may migrate in several phases. Migration cues may therefore vary between places.4
• Wild Japanese eels released into a brackish lagoon in north-eastern Japan divided into sedentary individuals (8 of 20 stayed near the river mouth over winter) and individuals that showed behavioural plasticity in habitat use, some moving toward parts of the lagoon with stronger marine influence.5
• European eels show no genetic differentiation across Europe and North Africa, so they must meet very diverse conditions through phenotypic plasticity.6 American eels are panmictic across their tropical range as well,7 and their DNA methylation patterns vary with geography and, to a lesser degree, with salinity.8
• Sex in American eels appears to depend on environmental conditions.9 Environmental sex determination and the need for surplus production may be components of the anguillid life-history strategy.10
• A review of 190 wildlife management studies found that interventions insufficiently considered animal learning, decision-making, individuality, sociality and relations with humans.11 Migratory animals' decisions, such as altered migration patterns, can already prompt new protected areas, and animal law could move from representing animal interests toward listening to animals and empowering them to make decisions with legal effect.12 Creative decisions in environmental governance and design can draw on nonhuman as well as human decision-makers.13
• Design reading: individual variation, plasticity and provisional decisions under limited information make eels poor fits for average-based management. Cf. capability mapping and "just-in-caseness" in Eel Project, and Decision Making.

Engineers and Co-Designers

• Eels rework sediments, structure food webs and move nutrients. See Ecosystem Engineering, Niche Construction and Habitat Modification.
• Eels and humans have co-produced landscapes. The Gunditjmara eel aquaculture system at Budj Bim is about 6,000 years old.14 Its recent restoration involves "re-storying engineering and eeling".15 Ancient aquaculture elsewhere also worked through ecosystem engineering and domesticated landscapes, in a "first Blue Revolution" that began about 8,000 years ago in China.16 At Muldoons Trap Complex, Lake Condah, channels date to at least 6,600 years ago, basalt walls to 600 to 800 years ago, and a barrier for ponding floodwater and containing eels to 300 to 500 years ago.17
• Eels already co-design human infrastructure because their bodies and choices decide whether it works. Fish-pass efficiency depends on elver size as well as on slope and discharge.18 Some eels tolerate electric guidance fields and continue along their original trajectory,19 and seaward-migrating eels switch from following streamlines to avoidance near hydropower intakes.20
• Recognising wildlife agency can reduce conflict when management targets place-based relationships rather than control of species.21 Nonhumans already participate in design processes, although participatory design mostly attends to human participants.22 Bioinclusive collaborative and participatory design proposes twelve principles for a non-anthropocentric values base.23
• Frames from the Deep Design Lab for nonhuman beings as designers and leaders: plants as designers,24 tests for blocked nonhuman leadership,25 and interspecies cultures and capabilities.26
• See the Interventions table for designs that eels support, resist or suffer.

Witnesses and Archivists

• Otoliths. Strontium to calcium ratios along otolith transects record where each eel has lived. In the East River, Nova Scotia, they revealed four distinct but interrelated behavioural groups, including eels that entered fresh water as elvers, eels that stayed in estuaries for a year or more first, and eels that stayed in fresh water until silvering.27 In the Kaoping River, Taiwan, they showed that yellow eels in the lower reach had different salinity histories, including freshwater and seawater contingents.28 In the Minho River, Portugal, otolith shape alone separated eels from tributaries and from the estuary.29 Otolith microstructure in 455 glass eels from Moorea and Tahiti dated hatching to the August to November dry season and recruitment to the November to March rainy season.30
• Contaminants. Sedentary adult eels accumulate lipophilic substances in muscle tissue, which makes them bio-indicators of chemical contamination in local fresh waters.31 European eels from the polluted River Tiber and from the less polluted Lake Bolsena differed in gene expression, and several detoxification genes were upregulated.32 Contaminants may have contributed to the collapse of eel stocks.33
• Parasites. Parasites record translocations. The swimbladder nematode Anguillicola crassus followed eels moved by humans,34 including to Réunion, where four of six helminth species found in native eels were non-native.35 Since the introduction of A. crassus in the early 1980s, the parasite has impaired swimbladder function in most European eels.36
• Genomes. Genomic data record population bottlenecks and expansions over millions of years. See Historical Ecology.
• Lost cultures and die-offs. Eels on the Thames may have lost their collective knowledge of safe upstream habitat.37 See Collective Memory. Die-offs register contamination and heat events. See Die-Offs, Harm and Damage.
• Witnessing as method. Human witnessing of animal others carries political weight and uneven power.38 Engaged witnessing follows the movements of animals so that research becomes co-fabricated with nonhuman actors.39 Eel traps and fishing weirs, like scarred trees, offer testimony of Indigenous environmental knowledge, which raises the question of what happens when the landscape looks back.40 Nonhuman witnessing, including ecological forms, offers "a communicative politics that begins with ecological relations and the inherent agencies of nonhuman things, animals, and places".41 Cf. forensic ecologies and sentinels in Eel Project.

Ambassadors, Flagships and Teachers

• Given their catadromous life cycle and their global commercial and cultural importance, anguillid eels can serve as indicator, umbrella, and flagship species, as well as a broader surrogate for freshwater biodiversity conservation.

  Itakura, Hikaru, Ryoshiro Wakiya, Matthew Gollock, and Kenzo Kaifu. “Anguillid Eels as a Surrogate Species for Conservation of Freshwater Biodiversity in Japan.” Scientific Reports 10, no. 1 (2020): 8790. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65883-4.

• A flagship need not be a good indicator or umbrella.42 Charismatic megafauna can act as ambassadors of freshwater biodiversity,43 and nonhuman charisma has ecological, aesthetic and corporeal dimensions.44 Eels score poorly on conventional charisma. Fish in general strike many humans as non-cuddly: cold, slimy and without a "face", so humans struggle to imagine meaningful relations with them.45 Representations of fish across science and cultural studies shape the cultural politics of fish.46

• The European eel is the "Eurofish par excellence": its genetics, distribution, food and trade history, decline and supranational recovery measures all express Europeanness. Popular support for its recovery is still harder to mobilise than for terrestrial mammals.31 Cf. freshwater eels as "a symbol of the effects of global change" in Human Impact.

• Teachers. Anishinabe scholarship presents Anguilla rostrata as a teacher that helps address epistemicide.47 An "anguillid lens" shows how eels reconnect people and waterways.48 Outdoor encounters with eels built sense of place among urban adolescents.49 The Hudson River Eel Project trains volunteers and students to monitor glass eels,50 and natural history students on the Muhheakantuck (Hudson) assist that monitoring by pulling up nets "pulsing with glass eels".51

Governors, Kin and Relations

• Anishinabe clan and kinship knowledge (dodem gikendaasowin) suggests that humans live in a world that includes an aquatic governance mediated by eels. The framing supports intergenerational land-based healing and Indigenous environmental justice, and it links eel mortality and migration barriers to the extractive infrastructure of settler colonial land occupation.52
• Eels' "nomadic" behaviours provide spiritual value and support for Algonquin people, and eels are a ceremonial offering and medicinal resource for the Mi'kmaq.53
• On the Dyarubbin (Hawkesbury-Nepean River), Darug people tell the story of the Great Eel, and a large eel engraving mirrors the shape of the river.54
• Polynesian immigrants brought to Aotearoa New Zealand attitudes that associated eels with danger and divine beings.55
• In the Kaipara Harbour, hapū lead a mātauranga-informed management model. See Habitat and Catchment Restoration.56
• Dominant environmental governance rests on a modernist ontology that makes some relations visible and others invisible. Ontological pluralism in practice requires confronting the coloniality of governance.57 In Aotearoa New Zealand, Treaty settlements between the Crown and iwi have established co-governance of rivers, which raises questions of legal and ontological pluralism.58 Cf. nonhuman leadership in Leadership.
• Animals communicate with each other and with humans, and treating them as mute renders them politically silent.59 Cf. the listening and empowerment standards for animal law.12 See Representation.

Keepers of Uncertainty

• Nobody has directly observed eels spawning. European eels spawn across a region of the Sargasso Sea about 2,000 km wide.60 Satellite tags on 26 eels from the Azores gave the first direct evidence of adult European eels reaching the Sargasso Sea, almost a century after Johannes Schmidt proposed it from larval surveys. No one has yet sampled eggs or spawning adults there. European eel recruitment has declined by 95% since the 1980s.61
• Eel science combines 40 million years of evolution with two millennia of speculation.62 Aristotle believed eels derived from earthworms that emerged spontaneously from mud. Carlo Mondini proved eels to be fish only in 1777. About a century later, the medical student Sigmund Freud dissected hundreds of eels in search of male sex organs and gave up. Giovanni Battista Grassi saw a leptocephalus transform into a glass eel in 1896 and identified male gonads the following year, and Johannes Schmidt traced European eel leptocephali to the Sargasso Sea in 1922.63
• For decades, scientific literature, government reports, public resources and community narratives repeated that New Zealand longfin eels spawn near Tonga and shortfins east of Samoa. The claim began as early speculation and hardened through repetition.64
• Eels generate emergent knowledge and ontological politics in an age of extinctions.65 They remain widely studied yet poorly understood.53 Fish migration science still holds at least a hundred pressing questions, including on internal state, navigation and locomotor capabilities.66 Cf. Uncertainty, Ignorance.

Interventions

Designed and undesigned interventions in eel lives, across times and actors. "For eels" gives a provisional reading from the eels' side, which often differs from human valuations. "Status" distinguishes historical, current, proposed and imagined interventions. Entries marked imagined are design propositions from this note, without a source.

Knowledges Not Talking to Each Other

Eel literatures often grow in parallel. The working impression is that scientists rarely cite critical animal studies, that Indigenous and anthropological scholarship rarely engages critical food studies or animal-culture research, and that design scholarship on nonhuman participation has not yet met eels. To test this impression, the table counts in how many full texts per field selected terms appear at least once. The counts come from full texts held in the Deep Design Lab Zotero library on 27 September 2026, with reference lists excluded where detectable. A mention is a crude proxy for engagement, so treat the counts as prompts for a proper citation analysis. Cf. Ignorance, Bias, Professions.

Texts counted:

• Eel science reviews.67^, 53^, 68^, 69^, 70^, 71^, 72^, 10^, 73^, 62
• Guidance engineering.74^, 19^, 75^, 20^, 18^, 76
• Welfare science.77^, 78^, 79^, 80
• Criminology and trade.81^, 82^, 83^, 84^, 85^, 86^, 87^, 88
• Food studies.89^, 90
• Indigenous, anthropological and historical.52^, 47^, 48^, 54^, 65^, 91^, 55^, 92^, 15^, 14^, 31^, 93
• Design and animal agency.22^, 23^, 24^, 25^, 13^, 21^, 11
• Animal culture.94^, 95

Observed gaps and possible bridges:

• Eel science and sentience. None of the ten eel-science reviews uses "sentience", and only one mentions welfare. Welfare science on eels measures how quickly slaughter methods produce unconsciousness,77^, 78^, 79 and a systematic review found only three eel papers relevant to sentience.80 Meanwhile, work on fish intelligence and sentience,96^, 97^, 98^, 99 and critical animal studies of fish oppression and fish eating,100^, 101 rarely enter eel management. Cf. Critical Animal Studies, Sentience Book Project, Sentience.
• Eel science and animal culture. None of the sixteen science and engineering texts mentions social learning or animal culture, and the two animal-culture papers never mention eels. Animal-culture research argues that culture matters for conservation and for the Convention on Migratory Species,94^, 95 that cultural transmission shapes range shifts under climate change,102 that migration has social dimensions,103 and that animal cultures matter to animals themselves.104 Eel evidence would fit: glass eels follow conspecific cues,105 silver eels respond to conspecific chemical cues,106 eels form social networks,107 and Thames eels may have lost a migratory culture.37 Human interruption of animal lifeways can amount to epistemic injustice,108 and conservation has tried to restore lost cultures, for example with drones that taught ibis a forgotten migratory route.109 Cf. Culture, Collective Memory.
• Political economy and colonialism. None of the science, engineering, welfare or trade texts uses "colonial". Commodification appears in criminology and food studies,84 while Indigenous scholarship links eel decline to the extractive infrastructure of settler colonialism.52 Cf. Colonialism, cheap nature in What Is Eel (Private).
• Food. The criminology and food-studies texts do not mention Indigenous peoples, and most Indigenous and anthropological texts do not use the vocabulary of cuisine or luxury, although eating, avoiding and prohibiting eels matter to both. Compare the "luxurisation" of eels in northern cities,90 London's fading eel, pie and mash shops,89 and Pacific food avoidance and prohibitions.55 Cf. Food, Indigenous.
• Agency and design. None of the seven design and animal-agency texts mentions eels, while guidance studies treat eels as responders to stimuli. An eel that tolerates an electric field and continues on its course19 is noise in one field and a candidate act of refusal in another.11^, 21^, 12 Cf. Agency, Participatory Design, More-than-Human Participation (Review).
• Laboratory and field. Fish cognition research relies heavily on captive-bred individuals and laboratory settings, which limits generalisation to wild fishes.110 Eel cognition studies have used mazes.111
• Sensory ecology and design. Sensory ecology can improve conservation, for example by removing sensory traps and reducing human-wildlife conflict.112 Magnetoreception may be one of the first senses to evolve.113 Guidance engineering uses sensory stimuli, but it rarely reconstructs eel Umwelten. Cf. Sensory Ecology and Bioacoustics in Eel Project.
• Existing bridges. Two eel-science reviews discuss Indigenous peoples,67^, 53 policy research proposes incorporating Indigenous knowledge into American eel fishery decisions,114 hapū lead Kaipara Harbour management,56 and river co-governance in Aotearoa New Zealand tests legal and ontological pluralism.58 Community science on the Hudson,50 Gunditjmara restoration at Budj Bim14 and a travelling classroom in the South Pacific115 sit in separate literatures, so comparing them is a design opportunity.
• Narratives outliving evidence. Speculation about New Zealand eel spawning grounds hardened into accepted truth,64 and the history of eel science is a history of confident errors.63^, 62

Taxonomy, Evolution and Distribution

The genus Anguilla holds 19 species or subspecies, found globally except in the eastern Pacific and southern Atlantic. The label "freshwater eels" misleads: all anguillids are facultatively catadromous, born in the ocean and developing in continental waters, and a proportion never enter fresh water. Six species are listed as Threatened on the IUCN Red List and four as Data Deficient.73 Another count lists all six temperate species and seven tropical species within IUCN threatened categories.10

Electric eels are not true eels. They belong to the knifefish family, close relatives of the catfishes.97

List of Species

Standard English names follow Tsukamoto, Kuroki and Watanabe (2020), who proposed 22 names for the 19 taxa. Each polytypic species has a name of its own as well as names for its subspecies. The earlier version of this list matched the taxonomy of Watanabe (2003), cited with the figures below, which treated A. ancestralis (now a synonym of A. celebesensis) and A. nebulosa (now A. bengalensis) as species and predates A. luzonensis. For older scientific names, names in other languages, life-stage names and doubts, see Eel Names and Languages.

• Group 1
  • A. celebesensis (Celebes eel)
  • A. interioris (New Guinea eel)
  • A. megastoma (Polynesian longfin eel)
  • A. luzonensis (Luzon eel)
• Group 2
  • A. bengalensis (Bengal eel)
    • A. b. bengalensis (Indian Bengal eel)
    • A. b. labiata (African Bengal eel)
  • A. marmorata (Indo-Pacific eel)
  • A. reinhardtii (Australian longfin eel)
• Group 3
  • A. borneensis (Borneo eel)
  • A. japonica (Japanese eel)
  • A. rostrata (American eel)
  • A. anguilla (European eel)
  • A. dieffenbachii (New Zealand longfin eel)
  • A. mossambica (Mozambique eel)
• Group 4
  • A. bicolor (Bicolor eel)
    • A. b. bicolor (Indian bicolor eel)
    • A. b. pacifica (Pacific bicolor eel)
  • A. obscura (Polynesian shortfin eel)
  • A. australis (Australian eel)
    • A. a. australis (Australian shortfin eel)
    • A. a. schmidtii (New Zealand shortfin eel)

Tsukamoto, Katsumi, Mari Kuroki, and Shun Watanabe. “Common Names for All Species and Subspecies of the Genus Anguilla.” Environmental Biology of Fishes 103, no. 8 (2020): 985–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-020-00988-3.

Aoyama, Jun. “Origin and Evolution of the Freshwater Eels, Genus Anguilla.” In Eel Biology, edited by Katsumi Aida, Katsumi Tsukamoto, and Katsumi Yamauchi, 19–29. Tokyo: Springer, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-65907-5_2.

Known or suspected spawning sites for well-studied Anguilla spp.: 1, A. anguilla; 2, A. australis; 3, A. bengalensis; 4, A. celebesensis; 5, A. dieffenbachii; 6, A. japonica; 7, A. marmorata; 8, A. mossambica; 9, A. reinhardtii; 10, A. rostrata. The coasts of regions colonized by them are shaded grey. Warm currents that are likely to carry larval Anguilla spp. from spawning areas to the growth habitat are shown by arrows.

Watanabe, Shun. “Taxonomy of the Freshwater Eels, Genus Anguilla Schrank, 1798.” In Eel Biology, edited by Katsumi Aida, Katsumi Tsukamoto, and Katsumi Yamauchi, 3–18. Tokyo: Springer, 2003.

Evolution

• Evolution of the eel – a matter of continental drift
• The long spawning migrations of catadromous anguillid eels from freshwater to the open ocean appear to be a relic of reproductive behaviour shared with deep-ocean pelagic eels.116 The likely basal species (A. borneensis) and tropical eels have much shorter migrations.117
• Seven tropical Indo-Pacific species have remained distinct for up to 10 million years despite ongoing hybridisation.118
• Reviews of the "migration problem" and of anguillid "extreme swimming".62^, 119

Life History, Movement and Capabilities

Migration

• European eels (Anguilla anguilla) grow in European rivers and lakes, then migrate roughly 5,000 to 7,000 km to the Sargasso Sea in the western Atlantic to spawn. This is one of the longest known fish migrations. Spawning occurs across a vast region of the Sargasso Sea, about 2,000 km wide.60 No one has observed the exact spawning sites directly. Another estimate puts the European migration at 5,000 to 10,000 km, the longest of all anguillids. Satellite-tagged eels from the Azores travelled at 3 to 12 km per day.61
• European eels are four to six times more efficient at long-distance swimming than salmonids, with an energetic cost of 10 to 12 mg fat per km.120
• During their oceanic spawning migration, anguillid eels undertake daily vertical migrations: they swim at roughly 100 to 400 m at night and 500 to 800 m during the day.121
• For tropical and Australasian migrations, see Geographies.

Movement Ecology

• Station keeping takes place within the home range of the animal and corresponds to simple movements for foraging and predation avoidance.
• Ranging and migration occur outside the home range.
• Ranging: the search for a resource (mate, food, etc.). Stops when the resource is found.
• Migration: triggered by physiological and environmental cues rather than by the search for a resource. It affects most individuals in the population, occurs over a long timescale, requires orientation, and suggests a return journey.
• Diadromous fish, such as eels, undergo two long migrations:
  • From the spawning grounds to growth habitat, including active upstream migration in river catchments during the early years of their continental life stage.
  • During the second migration eels return to the oceanic spawning grounds from their growth habitats in rivers or coastal waters.
• Eels may also move between different habitats during their continental stage, movements which correspond to station keeping and ranging.69

Climbing and Overland Movement

• Japanese eels, Anguilla japonica, can surmount natural waterfalls up to 46 m high.122

  

• In Switzerland, specimens have been recorded at altitudes of 3,000 feet (925 m) above sea level.123

• Regarding Anguilla megastoma (Polynesian eel), an IUCN Red List note reports that many occur at higher altitudes. The note also cites evidence that this species can cross obstacles by leaving the water and crawling over moist ground. Individuals sampled in Lake Letas, 7 km inland on Gaua Island, Vanuatu, likely passed Siri Falls (120 m high) as elvers.

• In Australia, elvers move around the 140 metre Warragamba Dam to reach Lake Burragorang. Scientists track amazing eel migration

• Eels travel overland during rain, and a Fenland eel trapper recalls that "a good thunderstorm would get them started". When a storm near Ely ended early, silver eels crossing a field died there, and the farmer phoned to ask where they had come from.124

• An eel's slime keeps its skin moist enough to survive for a couple of days on land if it finds leaves or mud for cover.125

• Eels in the Lake Champlain basin reached depths of 90 m and distances of 40 km upstream, but rarely passed dams higher than 10 m. See North America.

Longevity

There are legends of eels living 155 years (the Brantevik Eel in Sweden, in a well). There are also reports of New Zealand longfin eels living for more than 100 years. In Sweden, people reportedly kept eels in wells to help clean the water by preying on small animals and insects.

Sentience, Cognition and Sociality

For welfare and pain, see Welfare, Stress and Pain.

Sentience and Cognition

Cf.

• emotional contagion126
• social learning127
• dispersal decisions in metacommunities128

There is quite a bit of research on Japanese eel behaviour by Watanabe, for example on spatial learning with extra- and intra-maze cues.111 Fish cognition research more broadly covers spatial navigation, numeracy, learning, decision-making and even theory of mind.110 For fish intelligence and sentience, see also Brown and Balcombe.96^, 97

Eels can serve as model species for the study of:

• olfaction in fish
• social behaviour in fish due to their gregariousness in glass eel stage. Social network structures are easy to study because direct contact and association are easy to monitor in captivity.

Senses and Umwelt

• Many fishes perceive magnetic fields, both long-distance migrants and more sedentary species, and magnetoreception may be one of the first sensory systems to have evolved.113
• Sensory ecology can inform conservation practice, for example by ameliorating sensory traps and reducing human-wildlife conflict.112
• For eel hearing, soundscapes, possible sound production and the magnetic imprinting hypothesis, see Umwelt in Eel Project. Cf. Sensory Ecology.

Sociality

• Eels learn their position in a social hierarchy through repeated agonistic encounters: larger eels become reliably dominant once about 1.5 times heavier than their opponent, and dominant eels then grow faster and survive better than subordinates.129
• Standard metabolic rate predicts aggression in eels: those with a higher metabolic rate bite, push and steal food from conspecifics (kleptoparasitism) more often, which links individual physiology directly to rank-seeking.130
• Wild eels dominate farmed eels on contact: in mixed rearing trials they bit farmed eels more often and monopolised refuges. Farmed eels reared alongside wild eels then grew more slowly and survived less well than farmed eels reared apart, a divergence that emerged within a single generation of aquaculture.131
• Aggregation during migration and freshwater residence often reflects active social preference among eels themselves, a pattern noted in reviews of anguillid movement.132^, 70 Acoustic tracking in a UK reservoir found eels aggregating at consistent spatial and temporal scales, supporting this role for sociality in freshwater residence.107
• Chemotaxis toward conspecific odour in American eels is life-stage specific: glass eels are attracted to the previous year's elver washings, a possible cue to a safe migration route inland, but elvers themselves show no response to elver or yellow-eel washings.105 Silver eels beginning their oceanic outmigration also respond to conspecific chemical cues, so chemical cueing may operate at both the inbound and outbound ends of the freshwater phase.106

Collective Memory

Cf. Collective Memory, Culture

• Are larger or older eels helping younger eels navigate their environment and learn important survival skills?

• Eels on the river Thames may have lost the culture of going upstream:37

  "But the elver run that had so delighted Edward Jesse, and brought the urchins out crying ‘eel-fare time’, has never been restored to its former glory. It may well be that the species’ collective awareness of safe sanctuary up the Thames system was extinguished by the barrier of London’s filth, and that the arriving infants were content with the habitat offered by the tidal sections. A study of Thames eel stocks carried out by Iain Naismith in the late 1980s indicated that the new blood penetrating upstream from the capital was nowhere near sufficient to maintain a dynamic population."

• Glass eels respond to the previous year's elver washings (see Sociality), a possible chemical trace of earlier passage.105

• Animal-culture research offers frames for these questions: culture matters for conservation,94^, 95 vertical transmission can make species conservative in the face of climate change while horizontal transmission can support innovation,102 migration has social dimensions,103 and cultures matter to animals as well as to conservation goals.104

• Interrupting animal lifeways can harm animals' ability to acquire the knowledge they have an interest in, which may count as epistemic injustice.108 Conservation has tried to restore lost cultures, for example with drones that taught ibis a forgotten migratory flightpath.109

• For the hypothesis that eels imprint on geomagnetic gradients as larvae and retrace them as adults, see Magnetoreception in Eel Project.

Ecology and Relationships with Other Beings

Interpret as give and take in diverse worlds, moving beyond mechanistic explanations to consider eel relations as forms of politics, economy, culture and expertise, at least as seriously taken provocations.

Coevolution and Mutualisms

• In the Baltic, eels formed close association with eelgrass habitats (seagrass meadows).133
• Eels can host the developing larvae of five of the six most widespread European freshwater mussel species tested in one study. Their long upriver migrations may help mussels move upstream and connect populations between catchments. Freshwater bivalves, including unionids, are important ecosystem engineers because they contribute to filtration, nutrient cycling, bioturbation, and habitat provision for other benthic organisms.134

Parasites

• Comparative infection experiments involving Japanese and European eels showed differences in immune defence, reflecting coevolution versus an abrupt host switch. This is interesting as an example of rupture.
• Evidence suggests coevolution between the nematode genus Anguillicola and four Indo-Pacific eel species that act as hosts.34 This is an interesting example of how anthropogenic relocation can create a rupture and a "sacrifice zone" or "dissonance field".135
• On Réunion, native A. marmorata, A. bicolor and A. mossambica carried six helminth species, four of them non-native, including the invasive swimbladder nematode A. crassus.35
• A. crassus impairs the silvering-related increase in defences against reactive oxygen species in swimbladder tissue, which the eel needs for the pressure changes of diel vertical migration.36

Niche Segregation and Partitioning

• Differences in migratory and movement patterns between the two freshwater and marine eel species lead to niche segregation in the brackish bay where they coexist. It is possible that the catadromous behaviour of anguillid eels may have evolved as an adaptation to avoid competition with marine eels such that the interspecific competition drove their life history shift into freshwater habitats.136 This is an example of compromise and negotiations between nonhuman beings.
• On Yakushima Island, Indo-Pacific eels (A. marmorata) use clear, fast-flowing mainstems and tributaries with larger substrates, while the temperate Japanese eels (A. japonica) prefer stagnant, muddy habitats such as estuaries, ponds, irrigation channels, backwater areas, and reservoirs. Such niche partitioning allows the two species to coexist by reducing competition due to their similar niches, suggesting an interspecies relationship mediated by resource use. It also places the two species in different local food webs and sediment environments, even where their ranges overlap.137 A similar partitioning occurs in Taiwan.138

Predators and Prey

• Marine predators, probably lamnid sharks, tuna or marine mammals, ended at least about 30% of tracked short-finned eel migrations, mostly before the eels left the Australian continental shelf.139
• Kooyang are efficient hunters of molluscs, insects, crustaceans, fish, water rats and even birds. See Australia.

^{"The Biter Bit, (an incident of Bird-life in New Zealand)"}

A Classified List of Mr. S. William Silver’s Collection of New Zealand Birds. With Walter L. Buller. London: E. A. Patherick and Co., 1888, p. 40.

Hosie, E. R. “Cormorant and Eels.” Emu 19, no. 3 (1920): 246.

Thomson, Donald. “Cormorant and Eels.” Emu 19, no. 3 (1920): 247.

Ecosystem Engineering, Niche Construction and Habitat Modification

• Food webs. The American Eel plays an important role in the structure of tropical lotic food webs through top-down effects that are potentially augmented by in-stream barriers, linking the eel's role to habitat features.140
• Connectivity and nutrients. The migration of anguillid eels facilitates connections and relationships throughout water systems, facilitating the movement of nutrients and energy within ecosystems.48^, 141^, 142^, 143
• Burrows. American eels construct burrows by forcing their heads and bodies into the substrate with rapid undulations, a form of bioturbation that changes physical habitat. They can form craters or mounds around burrow openings, physically altering the sediment surface. Burrows observed in both laboratory and field settings can have as many as five openings, creating complex, multi-holed structures. Eels draw water from the surrounding water column through their mouths and expel it through their gills, which allows them to breathe while hidden in the sediment.144
• Bioturbation and predation. Japanese eels selectively feed on infaunal organisms. They may excavate burrowing crabs and polychaetes from mudflat sediments before swallowing them in the water column, a behaviour that transfers animals and sediment from the benthos into the water column and may change sediment and the benthic community. They can construct burrows up to 30 cm deep, covering the usual depths of many macrobenthic invertebrates and implying substantial physical interaction with estuarine substrate.145 The European eel is one of the three species with the highest maximum potential bioturbation (silt perturbation) impact score, indicating a significant role in sediment reworking.146
• Soils and co-culture. Eels engage in ecosystem engineering through continuous activity in soil, which enhances soil porosity and reduces bulk density, similar to the effects of earthworms. The eel co-culture system can shift ammonia-oxidising microbial communities by altering soil physicochemical properties, which can in turn promote nitrification.147 This can be useful in rice cultivation,148 suggesting a service relationship with humans.
• Seston. Eels are the only fish members of the nocturnal stream community (also including crayfish, amphibians, and macroinvertebrates) that are likely driving diel patterns of seston transport.149
• Substrate selection. European eel elvers prefer coarse gravel, suggesting that conservation efforts may benefit from targeting this type of substratum in marine coastal areas.150 Anguillid eels use mud as a substrate refuge only in the absence of substrate cavities, and the winter distribution of eels in coastal bay and estuarine habitat is limited to waters warmer than the freezing point of fish tissue (about –0.7°C).151
• Hosting ecosystem engineers. The European eel can host most of the widespread European unionid mussel species, suggesting a role in the dispersal and survival of these ecosystem-engineering taxa. See Coevolution and Mutualisms.134
• Niche partitioning also sorts eel species into different sediment environments. See Niche Segregation and Partitioning.137
• Multiple effects. Eels have multiple direct and indirect effects in structuring food webs.152

Geographies

Europe

• Tracking confirms the importance of the Mediterranean rivers: European eels exit the Mediterranean Sea during their spawning migration.153
• European eels are supposed to be panmictic,6 but they also return to their rivers after travelling to the sea, as in the Narva River.2
• In the English Fens, eels leave in three distinct runs to the sea in September, October and November, usually on the new moon, and "the rougher the river the better they like it".124

Australia

First tracking of the oceanic spawning migrations of Australasian short-finned eels.139

Is this Australia's most hardcore animal?

Eels can travel over land, climb walls, and take down substantial prey. They are catadromous, meaning they live in freshwater but migrate to the ocean to breed. Two common eel species in Australia are the short-finned eel (Anguilla australis) and the long-finned eel (Anguilla reinhardtii). Both species spawn in the Coral Sea, near the Great Barrier Reef, after swimming thousands of kilometres from the east coast of Australia and New Zealand. This is one of the longest known migrations in Australian waters, but the exact location of their breeding grounds remains uncertain. Scientists are tracking eels with satellite tags to better understand this migration. Eels can live for decades in freshwater or estuaries before returning to the ocean to breed once and die. They are an important food source for many animals, including sharks and whales, as well as humans. Eels are also culturally significant for some Indigenous groups, who have harvested them for thousands of years.

Cf. the ABC story on eels slipping out of Victoria at night toward tropical spawning grounds.154

Species: Anguilla australis (Southern Shortfin Eel)

Species: Anguilla reinhardtii (Longfin Eel)

• Seaward migration of short-finned eels in south-eastern Australia is more complex than the rapid, direct migration often assumed.3^, 4
• When the wattles begin to bloom, Gunditjmara know that kooyang (short-finned eels) have started their journey downstream. Kooyang hunt molluscs, insects, crustaceans, fish, water rats and even birds. They are highly territorial and may stay in the same patch of water for years, even over a decade, until they mature at over a metre long. They then leave inland waterholes in their millions, slipping through waterways, drains and culverts and even across dry land, at the start of a journey of almost 3,000 km.155
• For Lake Condah and Budj Bim, see Indigenous and Local Relations and Habitat and Catchment Restoration.

Fishing in Victoria

In Victoria, there is fishing for eels and a 2017 management plan.

Eel Fishery, including the Victorian Eel Fishery Management Plan

Eels of Elizabeth Street in Melbourne

(Jefa Greenaway, Judith Alcorn, Mark Gillingham, landscape architect)

Wurundjeri elder Dave Wandin reckons eels moving through Melbourne drains is an urban legend, but he’s not about to rule it out completely.

One eel of a story: the slippery truth of a fishy underground migration (The Age)

• The University of Melbourne's Parkville campus sits on land that was historically a short-finned eel migration route. Anecdotes describe eels crossing the tennis courts of the old Vice-Chancellor's residence after heavy rain. A 2024 student capstone project used cameras and eDNA to test whether eels still reach the campus through stormwater drains. It detected no eels, although the positive control at the Melbourne Museum eel pond returned eel DNA. The authors note that non-detection does not prove absence, and their long-term vision is an eel pond on campus.156
• For Kulin eel seasons, eel harvesting at Tromgin and the eel trap bridge, see Australian Indigenous Connections in Eel Project.

Dyarubbin (Hawkesbury-Nepean River)

• A multispecies ethnography of eel, human and river relationships develops a "slippery methodology" from postqualitative inquiry, feminist posthumanism and more-than-representational theory. It works with conservationists and fishers, an aquarium, a science laboratory, a fish market and an eel festival, and it builds on sentipensante (feeling-thinking) as a research stance.54

North America

Tracking American eels on the open sea to crack the mystery of their migration

The Secret Life of Eels

• American eels form a single panmictic population from Canada to Trinidad and Tobago.7
• In the Lake Champlain basin, 2.7 million glass eels were stocked between 2005 and 2010. Records from 1929 to 2024 show eels throughout the lake and its tributaries, down to 90 m depth and up to 40 km upstream. Eels were rarely observed upstream of dams higher than 10 m, and observations declined upstream of multiple dams regardless of dam height.157
• For the Hudson River Eel Project, see Monitoring and Public Engagement.50

Pacific Islands and Aotearoa New Zealand

• Satellite tags on two A. marmorata and one A. megastoma from Vanuatu traced migrations toward a presumed spawning area about 870 km to the north-east. The two A. marmorata followed zig-zag paths, while the A. megastoma took a relatively straight course, at 21 to 23 km per day.158
• Glass eels of A. marmorata, A. megastoma and A. obscura recruiting to Moorea and Tahiti averaged 107, 118 and 110 days old.30
• On the spawning grounds of New Zealand eels, see Keepers of Uncertainty.64
• For A. megastoma climbing to Lake Letas, see Climbing and Overland Movement.
• For the South Pacific eel workshop and tropical habitat use, see Monitoring and Public Engagement and Habitat and Catchment Restoration.115^, 159

Human-Eel Relations

Consider “zones of sympatry” where humans and eels have coexisted for a long time, for example since the Pleistocene.

Long View

Long relationships between eels and humans, including multiple species of Homo, provide a rare lens into landscape use, landscape modification, population migration, and place practices. This relates to food as well as to wider human-nonhuman interactions and place change.

• Human-environment feedback systems with important biodiversity consequences are likely a recurrent feature of the Late Pleistocene, perhaps with even deeper roots. Of course, nonhuman living beings modify niches too.160
• Around 92,000 years ago in Malawi, human activities (for example, modified fire regimes) relaxed seasonal constraints on ignition, influencing vegetation composition and erosion. In tandem with climate-driven changes in precipitation, this contributed to an ecological transition toward an early, pre-agricultural anthropogenic landscape.161
• Other species of Homo lived in Andalusia, Spain, and fished for and ate eels (along with many other fish species) from about 500,000 to 45,000 years ago.162^, 163^, 164
• Middle Pleistocene hominins, including Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis, had nutritional requirements comparable to Homo sapiens and benefited from the availability of eels as food in river valleys and floodplains. Eels (Anguilla) were available throughout the year in floodplain landscapes and provided a high-fat, high-carbohydrate food source that helped hominins maintain their protein-to-calorie balance.165
• Human modification of the landscape, specifically in relation to eel aquaculture and management, began around the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, with more obvious indications appearing about 4000 years ago in Victoria, Australia.166 The Budj Bim aquaculture system is about 6,000 years old,14 and Muldoons Trap Complex was built in phases from at least 6,600 years ago.17
• In the Murray-Darling Basin, Aboriginal peoples built sophisticated fish traps, cut gaps in river banks to let fish move onto floodplains and may have practised a form of fish culture in small impoundments on ephemeral tributaries.167
• Details of significant environmental changes on Mangaia, Cook Islands, initiated by Polynesian colonisation around 2500 to 1800 years ago, including major forest clearance, increased erosion, and species extinctions, demonstrate substantial human modification of the landscape. Prehistoric Mangaians heavily exploited freshwater eels (Anguilla sp.), suggesting resource exploitation that coincided with environmental change.
• European eels were harvested by Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples in the western Baltic over millennia, but the major decline of 98% in the eel population has occurred since 1980. There is a long-term connection between pre-modern humans, anguillid eels, and eelgrass habitats (seagrass meadows).133
• Aquaculture across the ancient world combined ecosystem engineering with domesticated landscapes.16
• In Roman Italy, the term murena probably denoted any eel-like fish, including common eels, congers, morays and lampreys, so accounts of "eels" in Roman fishponds may refer to several taxa. Hirrius reportedly supplied six thousand murenae for the triumphal banquets of Julius Caesar in 46 and 45 BCE (Varro gives two thousand). The orator Quintus Hortensius and the triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus were said to have kept eels as pets and wept when they died, and murenae were adorned with jewellery and trained to come when called by name.168
• The late prehistoric Iroquoian peoples of the upper St. Lawrence River valley depended heavily on freshwater fish, and the American eel was among the most important species in their seasonal cycle.169
• Eels formed a critical component of medieval English cultural identity from about the tenth century. Eel-rents occur more often in the Domesday records than renders for corn, and in 1086 the marsh at Chesterton owed King William 1,000 eels a year. By the early seventeenth century Londoners bought most of their eels live from Dutch merchants on the Thames, and wars with the Dutch and high import tariffs ended the English eel culture by the end of that century.93
• European eel fisheries were mostly subsistence fisheries until development programmes in the late 1800s introduced commercial exploitation of new areas, markets and products. Growth continued until about 1950, when the current multidecadal decline set in.170

Names, Myths and Stories

• Baba-Yaga, the witch in Slavic folklore, has a name linked to the same root as the early Latin "anguis" (snake). This root also relates to anguilla, the genus name, and to many words in European languages.171
• Many aspects of eel ecology struck diverse cultures as mysterious or remarkable: eels found on land, but not on nights with a full moon; adult eels and fry moving through river mouths on full moons; their green glow (biofluorescence); and their long-lasting postmortem convulsions.163
• Aristotle's earthworm theory and Freud's failed dissections belong to the long history of speculation. See Keepers of Uncertainty.63
• For the Darug story of the Great Eel, see Governors, Kin and Relations.54

Indigenous and Local Relations

• The traditional eel fishery at Lake Condah and its historical and cultural significance to the Gunditjmara people.92
• Budj Bim Cultural Landscape gained international recognition for its 6,000-year-old Gunditjmara eel aquaculture system. Research for its World Heritage nomination found that the World Heritage system rarely treats Indigenous knowledge, use and management of natural resources as cultural values.14 Within 150 years of European colonisation, frontier violence, dispossession and hydrological alteration ended the system, and land and water restitution now enables the Gunditjmara to restore the Budj Bim wetlands.15
• Gunditjmara read the flowering of wattles as the sign that kooyang have started downstream.155
• Indigenous knowledge can improve the American eel fishery through policy-level decision-making in Canada.114
• For Anishinabe, Algonquin, Mi'kmaq, Darug, Polynesian and Māori relations, see Governors, Kin and Relations.
• Outdoor interactions with eels developed urban adolescents' sense of place.49
• Eels as sources of emergent knowledge and ontological politics.65
• The sensible order of the eel in settler colonial Aotearoa New Zealand.91

^{A Friendly Eel (16 October 1928)}

^{Knights, S. (Samuel Salkeld) (1852). Natives spearing eels, on Back Creek, 1852.}

Food

• Ethics of eating fishes.101^, 172
• Prohibitions and food avoidance: freshwater and marine eels in the Pacific and New Zealand.55 The mass harvesting and consumption of eels among Māori in New Zealand, often cited in historical records, was a post-European development, suggesting it is a recent cultural shift. Polynesian immigrants brought cultural attitudes to New Zealand associating eels with danger and divine beings, implying that eels were initially not considered food.55
• Eel consumption has been subject to a process of “luxurisation” in northern urban areas, becoming marketed as a delicacy associated with wealth and status, despite eels originally being a food for the masses in Spanish rural areas or Japan.90
• The notion of the eel as "dirty" has been re-interiorised within aspirational neoliberal modernity, linking the eel to poverty and the "great unwashed", while some see the food as irrelevant.89
• In Europe, one camp would help the eel by not eating it and another would help it precisely by eating it.31
• Roman banquets and pet eels: see Long View.168
• For the disconnect between food studies and Indigenous scholarship, see Knowledges Not Talking to Each Other. Cf. Food.

Japan

• In 2012: "The Japanese nation has a long history of using freshwater eels as food, and these days up to ~100,000 t of eels per year are consumed there, about 70 % of the world’s eel consumption."173
• Recent Japanese public perception of freshwater eels in newspaper coverage.174
• Japanese eel aquaculture and nutrition.175
• The modern Japanese culinary "tradition" known as washoku, which centres on rice, fish, and vegetables, has been described as an "invented tradition" with nationalistic or cultural heritage claims. The Japanese government began emphasising the nation's supposed history as a 'kingdom of fisheries' (suisan ōkoku) in the 1930s to further imperialistic expansion.176^, 177^, 178 Cf. the volume that holds the fisheries chapter.179

Fishing, Aquaculture and Trade

• Rice-eel co-culture. See Ecosystem Engineering, Niche Construction and Habitat Modification.148
• Eel reintroduction to control invasive fish.
• Development status and trends in Asian eel farming. In the 2018 season, the Japanese eel glass eel harvest failed across East Asia, with a total catch of only 21.52 t.180
• Eel market dynamics in East Asia: production, trade and consumption.181

Eel consumption in Japan from genetic species identification and trade data.182

• East Asian imports of live eel fry from the Americas rose from 2 t in 2004 to 157 t in 2022. Hong Kong alone imported 100.6 t from Haiti, 43.4 t from Canada, 12.7 t from the US and 0.2 t from the Dominican Republic in 2022, and almost all fry from Haiti travelled via Canada or the US. The demand has produced illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, illegal trade and social conflicts in some range states.87
• DNA barcoding of 327 eel products from 86 retailers in Singapore identified American eel in 70% of cases and European eel only three times, which may indicate a species switch in the trade.183
• For fishing in Victoria, see Fishing in Victoria.

Trafficking, Legality and Harm

• The illegal trade in European eels involves outsourcing, funding and complex symbiotic-antithetical relationships.85
• Threatened Anguilla species should move from CITES Appendix II to Appendix I.88 The impacts of proposed CITES listings remain uncertain.184
• Harms to European eels from trafficking and trade.82 Lessons from Spain on glass eel trafficking.83 Crime script analysis shows that glass eel poaching in Spain is a specialised activity that requires specific skills and tools.86
• A pound of elvers caught in Maine can command $3,000 or more on the black market.185
• The social and political construction of legality allows eel exploitation to be viewed as both harmful (Asian, illegal markets) and harmless (EU, legal markets), irrespective of the actual harm to the species.84
• A focus on organised crime and illegal wildlife trade as the main threat neglects many legal businesses and activities that also contribute to the endangerment of the European eel.81

Human Impact

• Freshwater eels as a symbol of the effects of global change.69
• Anguillids face habitat loss and modification, migration barriers, pollution, parasitism, exploitation and fluctuating oceanic conditions, with synergistic and regionally variable impacts.68
• Turbines and pumps: mortality of European eels after downstream migration through two types of pumping stations.186
• Contaminants and parasites. See Witnesses and Archivists.32^, 33^, 36
• Only 37% of the world's long rivers (over 1,000 km) have high levels of connectivity over their entire length. The rest carry dams and other river infrastructure, which prevent migratory fish from reaching spawning grounds, alter flow regimes and block juvenile dispersal.187

Die-Offs, Harm and Damage

• Western Victorian lakes eel death investigation 2004–06188
• ‘The eels were climbing out of the water to die’: why did every fish in this idyllic lake perish overnight?
• A number of dead eels have washed up on the Yarra
• Scores of dead fish, eels wash up after Melbourne factory fire

Ethics and Politics

• Fish oppression driven by capitalist commodification.100
• For cheap nature, fisheries and eels, see What Is Eel (Private). Cf. Critical Animal Studies, Interspecies Injustice.

Welfare, Stress and Pain

Cf. Aquaculture, Welfare, and Ethics, Sentience Book Project

• Farmed and wild-caught eels may be exposed to many stressful and painful experiences, including injuries and mortalities.
• There is literature on neck cutting and electrocution of eels during slaughter.
• Chilling. A study assessed the welfare implications of live chilling and freezing of farmed eels, including the time to reach unconsciousness, based on ECGs and pain responses. Pain responses disappeared in most eels after their body temperature fell to about 8°C, but three eels retained responses. The authors therefore identified a residual risk that chilling below 5°C did not reliably produce unconsciousness. The subsequent cold-brine treatment killed the eels, but the method raises welfare concerns because some animals may remain responsive during part of the process.77
• Needle stunning. Captive needle stunning produced theta and delta waves tending towards no brain activity, and no behavioural or EEG responses to pain stimuli. At least 93% of reliably recorded eels were effectively stunned when the pistol was correctly positioned, although five animals required a second shot and some showed slow muscle cramps for more than an hour.78
• Electrical stunning. Head-only electrical stunning produced an epileptiform EEG response, but all eels recovered in water. A combined head-only and head-to-tail treatment suppressed brain activity and responses to pain stimuli, yet complete recovery could take 60 minutes or longer. The study therefore supports treating stunning as part of a killing protocol rather than assuming that electrical stunning alone produces permanent unconsciousness.79
• Thin evidence. The eel-specific evidence base remains unusually thin. A systematic review of fish sentience found only three relevant papers for eels, all concerning the European eel. The studies assumed pain or stress rather than directly testing eel sentience, so the absence of eel-specific evidence should not be mistaken for evidence of an absence of sentience.80
• Divided literature. The wider fish-welfare literature remains divided about how behavioural and neurological responses distinguish nociception from conscious pain. A precautionary approach treats uncertainty as a reason to reduce avoidable injury, distress, and prolonged handling while research continues.99^, 189
• Non-cuddly fish. Evidence of fish sentience has done little to raise public interest in fish welfare, possibly because humans perceive fish as unable to form meaningful relations with them.45
• Fish minds. Do fish feel pain? What do fish know?98^, 97

The great fish pain debate.190

Conservation, Governance and Design

Recent reviews emphasise that eel conservation requires coordinated interventions across life stages and along connected waterways. The literature focuses especially on migration barriers and fish passage, while also identifying habitat loss, pollution, fishing mortality, turbine and pump mortality, and weak monitoring as linked problems.53^, 70^, 72 Thirty experts identified research and management questions across themes that include lifecycle and biology.67 Diadromous fish management likely fails when it focuses on barriers alone, so a "Big Five" roadmap combines barrier removal, fish passage, habitat restoration, restocking and fisheries management.191 For every intervention type, see the Interventions table.

Intervention Types

• remove barriers and restore river connectivity
• build or improve upstream passage structures, including eel ladders, ramps, tiles, and bypass channels
• protect downstream migrants with bottom-entry bypasses, screens, fish-return systems, deterrents, and safer turbine operation
• restore inland, estuarine, coastal, and wetland habitats
• reduce pollution and improve water quality
• regulate fishing, trade, stocking, and other sources of direct mortality
• monitor eel movement, recruitment, survival, and passage performance
• involve communities in monitoring, education, and place-based stewardship

Passage Infrastructure

• Barrier removal and upstream passage: remove barriers to migration; see fish pass design, guidance on pass design (UK), advice on passes and other measures (UK), commercial services, and eel tiles.
• Eel passes: shallow ramps with a wetted, climbable substrate can support upstream movement. Synthetic eel tiles with small vertical studs provide a less abrasive surface than rocks, branches, burlap, or coarse geotextile matting. Modelling indicates that passage efficiency increases with shallow slopes, low discharges, and larger elvers.18
• EU Lifeel: six eel ladders and ramps are intended to reopen approximately 1,000 km of waterways. The project also points to individual variation in migratory behaviour as a design consideration.1
• Downstream passage: potential measures include deep bypass entrances near the bottom of a channel, fish-return systems at power stations, electrified horizontal-bar rack bypasses, light adjustment, infrasound deterrents, and temporary turbine shutdowns at night. A 2026 Delphi study presents these as expert-ranked measures, so their effectiveness remains site-specific.71
• Dams: eels rarely pass dams higher than 10 m.157
• Rock fishways: Australia has 332 rock fishways, mostly lateral-ridge rock ramps (161) and random rock fishways (123), with 13 nature-like bypasses.192

Behavioural Guidance

• Review: MacLeod et al. (2025) assess light, sound, hydrodynamics, and electric fields for redirecting downstream-moving anguillid eels away from turbines and towards safer passage. The review identifies multimodal systems used with physical barriers as the most realistic current approach.74 For acoustic guidance, see Bioacoustics in Eel Project.
• Flow fields: Piper et al. (2015) tested manipulated flow fields at a hydropower intake. Flow acceleration altered the behaviour of seaward-migrating European eels, which often followed streamlines before switching to avoidance behaviour near the intake.20
• Electric fields: Miller et al. (2026) tested pulsed direct-current electric fields with yellow- and silver-phase European eels. Both life stages showed avoidance, but some eels tolerated the stimulus and continued along their original trajectory.19
• Floating LED arrays: Elvidge et al. (2026) tested a 216 m floating LED array with American eels. The array produced lateral deflection in 39.5% of eels and diving of at least 4 m in 76.7%, but did not meet the study's guidance target.75
• Sound: guidance by underwater sound may attract or deter fish so that they avoid in-water hazards during downstream migration.76
• Sensory ecology: see Senses and Umwelt.112

Monitoring and Public Engagement

• Community monitoring: the Hudson River Eel Project trained volunteers to monitor glass-eel recruitment at six sites along a 246 km tidal estuary for fourteen years. Motion-activated cameras, visible counters, and viewing points could extend this model while keeping people away from eels and passage routes. The cameras and viewing points are design proposals; the community-monitoring model is documented.50 Students join the monitoring as part of natural history teaching.51
• Citizen science on the Thames: monitoring all stages of complex life histories is demanding, but citizen science has succeeded in the Thames River Basin District. It increased eel monitoring by the Zoological Society of London from 2 staff-monitored sites in 2005 to 12 actively monitored sites in 2018.193
• Pacific islands: a workshop involving Fiji, Samoa, French Polynesia, and regional research and fisheries organisations identified national freshwater eel management plans, recruitment sampling, science-based regulation, public education, and culturally informed conservation as priorities. A travelling classroom and fine-mesh sampling at river mouths show how research and public engagement can become conservation infrastructure where formal eel ladders are absent.115
• Urban detection: cameras and eDNA tested eel presence on a Melbourne university campus. See Eels of Elizabeth Street in Melbourne.156

Habitat and Catchment Restoration

• Regional habitat mapping: tropical and Australasian eels use different habitats and migration routes. A review of tropical Anguilla species reports substantial variation in freshwater, estuarine, and marine habitat use, so local mapping should precede the transfer of passage designs between species or islands.159
• Lake Condah: restoration combined hydrological modelling, a new weir, fish-passage planning, wetland repair, and the reactivation of Gunditjmara eel traps and ponds. Budj Bim rangers also participated in acoustic telemetry, fish handling, and data collection, linking eel habitat restoration with cultural practice.92 Telemetry from the restored wetland later showed spring migration peaks and multi-phase migration.4
• Kaipara Harbour: the hapū-led Integrated Kaipara Harbour Management Group combines a shared harbour vision, kaitiakitanga, community-led initiatives, hapū monitoring, flagship sites, and coordination among Māori communities, government, researchers, farms, industry, and fisheries. The model concerns the whole harbour rather than a single eel passage structure.56
• Plastic habitat structures: plastic pipes and panels deployed to enhance freshwater fish habitat have a limited evidence base, risk pollution through degradation or leaching, and rarely come with decommissioning plans. The authors recommend natural materials and a voice for relevant actors in choosing materials.194 Cf. Restoration.

Stocking and Translocation

Stocking is a common technique with incompletely understood consequences.

• Eel translocation from a conservation perspective: a coupled systematic and narrative review.195
• Stocked fish reared in artificial environments may exhibit reduced performance.196 Farmed eels reared with wild eels grew more slowly and survived less well.131
• Stocked eels in the Lake Champlain basin may be expanding the overall distribution.157

Governance, Law and Policy

• This is about fisheries but interesting as an example of modelling and a process-based iterative approach that tracks human and eel behaviours in one loop.197
• The EU's main tool has been the Eel Regulation of 2007, and glass eel trafficking undermines efforts to increase stocks.31
• The European eel needs a new agreement under the Convention on Migratory Species.198
• The 2003 Québec declaration of concern about eel declines, eleven years later.199
• Ontological pluralism in environmental governance and river co-governance. See Governors, Kin and Relations.57^, 58
• An agency turn in animal law would move from representing animal interests to listening to animals and empowering them to make decisions with legal effect.12 Cf. Representation.
• DIASPARA Project: Unlocking the secrets of Europe's endangered Eel and Salmon
• CITES listings. See Trafficking, Legality and Harm.88^, 184

Law

UNEP. Single Species Action Plan for the European Eel (Anguilla anguilla). Resolution UNEP/CMS/Resolution 15.6. Campo Grande: United Nations Environment Programme, Convention on Migratory Species, Adopted by the Conference of the Parties at its 15th Meeting 2026.

UNEP. Single Species Action Plan for the European Eel (Anguilla anguilla). Resolution Annex UNEP/CMS/Resolution 15.6/Annex. Campo Grande: United Nations Environment Programme, Convention on Migratory Species, 2026.

Organisations

• European eel conservation | ZSL
• Eel Conservation

Research Approaches

What new learning is possible from the pluralist and more-than-human stance? The methods below are interesting as a compendium of things one can attempt and also as a body of evidence for critical analysis of the ways of knowing and governing. For gaps between fields, see Knowledges Not Talking to Each Other.

Humanities

Some references on ethnographic and similar approaches to hidden and watery creatures.

Alaimo, Stacy. “The Anthropocene at Sea: Temporality, Paradox, Compression.” In The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, 153–61. London: Routledge, 2017.

Bastian, Michelle. “Whale Falls, Suspended Ground, and Extinctions Never Known.” Environmental Humanities 12, no. 2 (2020): 454–74. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8623219.

Hale, Sadie E. “On Sharks Unseen: Oceanic Non-Encounters and Multispecies Ethnography.” Swamphen: A Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ) 10 (2024). https://doi.org/10.60162/swamphen.10.18030.

Mueller, Martin Lee. Being Salmon, Being Human: Encountering the Wild in Us and Us in the Wild. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.

Swanson, Heather Anne. “Methods for Multispecies Anthropology: Thinking with Salmon Otoliths and Scales.” In Multiple Nature-Cultures, Diverse Anthropologies, edited by Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita, 81–99. Berghahn Books, 2019.

• Eel-specific multispecies ethnography on the Dyarubbin.54 Engaged witnessing.39 Representing fish across disciplines.46 Nonhuman witnessing.41

Sciences

• genetic analysis
• eDNA, including to assess riverine populations
• satellite tags
• acoustic tags
• stable isotope analysis
• otolith microchemistry and shape analysis
• comparative morphology
• behavioural observation
• stomach content analysis
• diet experiments in captivity

Mapes, Murray, and Emma Mouillot. “Taxonomic Challenges and Advances in Eel Family Classification: Integrating Multidisciplinary Approaches.” FishTaxa - Journal of Fish Taxonomy 29 (2023): 24–35.

Brown, Culum, Kevin N. Laland, and Jens Krause. Fish Cognition and Behavior. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

• Telemetry-based research on anguillids spans five decades.121
• For eels as model species, see Sentience and Cognition. See also Data Acquisition.

Historical Ecology

Important as a way to establish trends that can demonstrate flexibility and projections into the future. Cf. Historical Ecology, Environmental History.

Questions:

• How have eels populated new habitats? (tens of millions of years; longer and longer migrations from the ocean to freshwater)
• What are the dynamics of eels encountering hominid and early human predation and harvesting? (tens of thousands of years; modified landscapes and population dynamics)
• What are the political, economic, and cultural consequences of eel harvesting and trade? (thousands of years; trade, competition, switching to eels after other fishes were overfished, etc.)

Lajus, Dmitry, Jekaterina Glazkova, Dmitry Sendek, Vadim Khaitov, and Julia Lajus. “Dynamics of Fish Catches in the Eastern Gulf of Finland (Baltic Sea) and Downstream of the Neva River during the 20th Century.” Aquatic Sciences 77, no. 3 (2015): 411–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-014-0389-9.

Lajus, Julia, Alexei Kraikovski, and Dmitry Lajus. “Coastal Fisheries in the Eastern Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland) and Its Basin from the 15 to the Early 20th Centuries.” PLOS ONE 8, no. 10 (2013): e77059. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077059.

Yurtseva, Anastasia, Elena Salmina, Alfred Galik, and Dmitry Lajus. “How a Millennium of Fishing Changed Fish Populations: A Case Study of Lake Peipus and the Velikaya River (NW Russia).” Aquatic Sciences 77, no. 3 (2015): 325–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-014-0381-4.

Japanese Eel Demographics

• This study used genetic data and two coalescent models to track changes in Japanese eel population size over time.200
• The effective population size fell from 38,000 to 10,000 fish between 4 million and 1 million years ago.
• It then rose to 80,000 fish between 1 million years ago and 22,000 to 30,000 years ago.
• Around 22,000 to 30,000 years ago, it fell again to about 60,000 fish.
• Changes in environmental conditions, especially around the last glacial maximum (19,000 to 33,000 years ago), may explain these shifts.
• The study indicates at least two population bottlenecks with a growth phase between them.
• Overall genetic diversity is low, but the authors found no evidence of inbreeding.
• These findings can help estimate the extinction risk of Japanese eel.

European and American Eel Demographics

Assuming a generation length of 13 years (as used in the study for European eels):201

• Eel populations stayed large and relatively stable for most of the last 5 million years, with effective population sizes often in the millions.
• Both European and American eels experienced a major population decline about 170,000 generations ago (roughly 2.2 million years ago). This decline coincided with the split of the two species from their common ancestor.
• A second major decline occurred about 90,000 generations ago (roughly 1.2 million years ago). After this, American eel populations expanded strongly, while European eel populations recovered more slowly and followed a different trajectory for about 30,000 generations.
• During the last 30,000 generations (roughly 390,000 years), both species remained remarkably stable despite repeated glacial and interglacial cycles. The sharp declines observed since the 1980s appear unusual against this long history of stability.

Implications for More-than-Human Design

Challenges

• non-cuddly species45
• moral status (sentience, pain)
• hard-to-study systems (ocean as a hard-to-access environment, large size)
• distributed systems (connectivity and reproductive migrations)
• forms of life in need of drastic reframing (from food to kin)
• long-duration systems
• loss of cultures (for example, eels on the river Thames have lost the culture for going upstream)37
• need to monitor all stages of complex life histories (but there are successful citizen science examples)193
• entrenched narratives that outlive the evidence64
• fields that do not read each other (see Knowledges Not Talking to Each Other)

Open Questions

• How to overcome biases in the study of eels?
• What distinct contributions and redundancies in knowledge about eels can emanate from different perspectives (disciplinary, indigenous, local, experiential, nonhuman)?
• What is the world, the goals, the preferences according to eels themselves?
• What contribution eels make to their ecosystems and communities?
• What would eels testify to as witnesses, and who would recognise their testimony?
• Which human institutions could let eels lead, for example through their movements, refusals and tolerances at barriers and guidance systems?
• Which interventions in the Interventions table would change if eel cultures, eel sentience or Indigenous eel law counted as design constraints?
• Which bridges between disconnected fields would change eel management fastest?

Proposals and Future

• An anguillid lens: how eels reconnect people and waterways.48
• Capability mapping for eels and an eel-led future river: see Eel Project.
• Books and papers in progress: Eel Chapter, Eel Leadership, What Is Eel (Private).

Media

Videos

Life History and Migration

We Finally Know Where Eels Come From

ABC Catalyst S12E25 Eel Migration

Freshwater Eels Can Travel Through Land To Reach The Ocean

Conservation

The Eels of Dandenong Creek

Saving Europe’s endangered eels

Farming (aka Exploitation)

Why Japanese Eel Is So Expensive

The whole Process of an Eel farm

Food (aka Killing)

Chef Kanejiro Kanemoto Is Japan's Grilled Eel Master — Omakase

How an Eel Farm Grows and Smokes Eels for Top Sushi Restaurants — Dan Does

Smuggling

The Black Market for Eels is Exploding

Fishing (aka Killing or Harassing)

See Hudson and Cassidy et al. under Japan.178^, 179

Further Reading

Aida, Katsumi, Katsumi Tsukamoto, and Katsumi Yamauchi, eds. Eel Biology. Tokyo: Springer, 2003.

Arai, Takaomi, ed. Biology and Ecology of Anguillid Eels. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016.

Fort, Tom. The Book of Eels: Their Lives, Secrets and Myths. 2002; Glasgow: William Collins, 2020.

Jellyman, Don J., and Andrew I. Stewart. “First Record of Male Freshwater Eels (Anguilla dieffenbachii) Caught at Sea.” New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 53, no. 2 (2019): 288–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/00288330.2018.1550792.

Kuroki, Mari, and Katsumi Tsukamoto. Eels on the Move: Mysterious Creatures over Millions of Years. Translated by Andrew Driver. Tokyo: Tokai University Press, 2012.

Prosek, James. Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Amazing and Mysterious Fish. New York: Harper, 2010.

Schweid, Richard. Eel. London: Reaktion, 2009.

Shell, Ellen Ruppel. Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, with Eels. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2024.

Svensson, Patrik. The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World. New York: Ecco, 2020.

Tesch, Friedrich-Wilhelm. The Eel. Edited by John E. Thorpe. Translated by Ray J. White. 1973. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2003.

Trischitta, Francesca, Yoshio Takei, and Philippe Sebert, eds. Eel Physiology. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1201/b15365.

Tsukamoto, Katsumi, and Mari Kuroki, eds. Eels and Humans. Tokyo: Springer, 2014.

Tsukamoto, Katsumi. Eel Science. With Mari Kuroki and Soichi Watanabe. Singapore: Springer, 2023.

Fiction

Day, Gregory. The Patron Saint of Eels. Sydney: Picador, 2015.

Viertel, J. J. The Glass Eel. New York: The Mysterious Press, 2025.

References

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Subnotes

1. Eel Names and Languages

Footnotes

1. De Russi, Gaia, Mattia Lanzoni, Angelo Bisazza, Paolo Domenici, Giuseppe Castaldelli, Cristiano Bertolucci, and Tyrone Lucon-Xiccato. “Eels’ Individual Migratory Behavior Stems from a Complex Syndrome Involving Cognition, Behavior, Physiology, and Life History.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 48 (2024): e2407804121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407804121.˄

2. Tambets, Meelis, Einar Kärgenberg, Ain Järvalt, Finn Økland, Martin Lykke Kristensen, Anders Koed, and Priit Bernotas. “Migrating Silver Eels Return from the Sea to the River of Origin after a False Start.” Biology Letters 17, no. 9 (2021): 20210346. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0346.˄

3. Crook, David A., Jed I. Macdonald, John R. Morrongiello, Chris A. Belcher, Danny Lovett, Adam Walker, and Simon J. Nicol. “Environmental Cues and Extended Estuarine Residence in Seaward Migrating Eels (Anguilla australis).” Freshwater Biology 59, no. 8 (2014): 1710–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.12376.˄

4. Koster, Wayne, Ben Church, David Crook, David Dawson, Ben Fanson, Justin O’Connor, and Ivor Stuart. “Factors Influencing Migration of Short-Finned Eels (Anguilla australis) over 3 Years from a Wetland System, Lake Condah, South-East Australia, Downstream to the Sea.” Journal of Fish Biology 104, no. 6 (2024): 1824–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.15726.˄

5. Noda, Takuji, Toshihiro Wada, Hiromichi Mitamura, Manabu Kume, Takuhei Komaki, Tsuneo Fujita, Tatsuma Sato, et al. “Migration, Residency and Habitat Utilisation by Wild and Cultured Japanese Eels (Anguilla japonica) in a Shallow Brackish Lagoon and Inflowing Rivers Using Acoustic Telemetry.” Journal of Fish Biology 98, no. 2 (2021): 507–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.14595.˄

6. Enbody, Erik D., Mats E. Pettersson, C. Grace Sprehn, Stefan Palm, Håkan Wickström, and Leif Andersson. “Ecological Adaptation in European Eels Is Based on Phenotypic Plasticity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118, no. 4 (2021): e2022620118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022620118.˄

7. Ulmo-Díaz, Gabriela, Augustin Engman, William O. McLarney, Carlos A. Lasso Alcalá, Dean Hendrickson, Etienne Bezault, Eric Feunteun, et al. “Panmixia in the American Eel Extends to Its Tropical Range of Distribution: Biological Implications and Policymaking Challenges.” Evolutionary Applications 16, no. 12 (2023): 1872–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.13599.˄

8. Ulmo-Díaz, Gabriela, Céline Audet, Eric Normandeau, Clare J. Venney, Kyle Wellband, Julie Turgeon, and Louis Bernatchez. “DNA Methylation Patterns Linked to Salinity and Geography in the American Eel (Anguilla rostrata).” Environmental Epigenetics 11, no. 1 (2025): dvaf012. https://doi.org/10.1093/eep/dvaf012.˄

9. Krueger, William H., and Kenneth Oliveira. “Evidence for Environmental Sex Determination in the American Eel, Anguilla rostrata.” Environmental Biology of Fishes 55, no. 4 (1999): 381–89. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007575600789.˄

10. Jellyman, Donald J. “An Enigma: How Can Freshwater Eels (Anguilla spp.) Be Such a Successful Genus yet Be Universally Threatened?” Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 32, no. 2 (2022): 701–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-021-09658-8.˄

11. Edelblutte, Émilie, Roopa Krithivasan, and Matthew Nassif Hayek. “Animal Agency in Wildlife Conservation and Management.” Conservation Biology 37, no. 1 (2023): e13853. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13853.˄

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14. Smith, Anita, Ian J. McNiven, Denis Rose, Steve Brown, Chris Johnston, and Simon Crocker. “Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management as World Heritage Values: Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Australia.” Archaeologies 15, no. 2 (2019): 285–313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-019-09368-5.˄

15. Jackson, Sue. “Caring for Waterscapes in the Anthropocene: Heritage-Making at Budj Bim, Victoria, Australia.” Environment and History 29, no. 4 (2023): 591–611. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16384451127393.˄

16. Rogers, Ashleigh J. “Aquaculture in the Ancient World: Ecosystem Engineering, Domesticated Landscapes, and the First Blue Revolution.” Journal of Archaeological Research 32, no. 3 (2024): 427–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-023-09191-1.˄

17. McNiven, Ian, Joe Crouch, Thomas Richards, Kale Sniderman, Nic Dolby, and Gunditj Mirring. “Phased Redevelopment of an Ancient Gunditjmara Fish Trap over the Past 800 Years: Muldoons Trap Complex, Lake Condah, Southwestern Victoria.” Australian Archaeology 81, no. 1 (2015): 44–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2015.11682064.˄

18. Padgett, Thomas E., Robert E. Thomas, Duncan J. Borman, and David C. Mould. “Individual-Based Model of Juvenile Eel Movement Parametrized with Computational Fluid Dynamics-Derived Flow Fields Informs Improved Fish Pass Design.” Royal Society Open Science 7, no. 1 (2020): 191505. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191505.˄

19. Miller, Mhairi, Helen Hadlington, Sophie Minns, Suleiman M. Sharkh, and Paul S. Kemp. “Advancing Behavioural Guidance Systems to Help Conserve the European Eel (Anguilla anguilla).” Scientific Reports 16, no. 1 (2026): 24122. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-54768-7.˄

20. Piper, Adam T., Costantino Manes, Fabio Siniscalchi, Andrea Marion, Rosalind M. Wright, and Paul S. Kemp. “Response of Seaward-Migrating European Eel (Anguilla anguilla) to Manipulated Flow Fields.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282, no. 1811 (2015): 20151098. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.1098.˄

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28. Tzeng, Wann-Nian, Jen-Chieh Shiao, and Yoshiyuki Iizuka. “Use of Otolith Sr:Ca Ratios to Study the Riverine Migratory Behaviors of Japanese Eel Anguilla japonica.” Marine Ecology Progress Series 245 (2002): 213–21. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps245213.˄

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