A narrow neck of land separates Lough Feeagh from Lough Furnace in Burrishoole, just north of Newport, Co Mayo. That morning, spurred by an overwhelming genetic instinct to reproduce, she was leaving Mayo to swim thousands of miles away to the Sargasso Sea, where she’d face her inevitable fate: to create new life, then die. If a scientist catches an eel at sea, is it possible to know whether it has already been in freshwater or not? They enter estuaries in November, and once the temperature reaches 10 degrees they swim into freshwater rivers and lakes as “elvers”. [ Michael Viney: Final proof of Irish eels’ long Sargasso swim ]Understandably, scientists still don’t fully understand what eels are up to in the Atlantic.

Source: The Irish Times January 20, 2024 16:55 UTC