Arjan Palstra

Or from mud or from slime.

So they thought it was not like an animal that was reproducing, which just started to exist spontaneously from something.

Even a big name like Sigmund Freud, he started his career by looking for the gonads of eel, but never found them.

Somewhere in the 1890s,

Italians discovered larvae were found in the seas around Italy.

And that was basically the starting point for Johannes Schmidt.

That's where he found larvae.

And at that moment, that was the most indirect proof that eels must be spawning right there in the Sargasso Sea.

We're talking about going to Mars, but in the meantime, we don't know many things of our deep seas.

That's a very good question.

It may have to do with the fact that they don't have a specific site where they spawn.

For instance, Japanese eel that spawns in the Mariana Ridge, we know that they do that near seamounts.

And they do that in upwelling areas near seamounts and also at a specific time, at noon moon.

So if you can pinpoint where you have to be and at what time, then you may be able to catch them in the act of spawning.

And Professor Tsukamoto, he has done that already back in the 90s for the Japanese eel.

But for European eels, they swim to the Segasu Sea, but not to a specific site.

It seems that they are spawning along

an axis, I guess you see, which may be as long as about 2,000 kilometers.

So it's not a specific site, but it probably has to do with the Earth magnetic field.

Yeah.