Arjan Palstra

Yeah, do you want to?

Well, I was always a bit reluctant to be weeks and weeks at sea and spend many, many hours looking through a microscope, whatever comes up.

The thing which is still mysterious is catching eggs and of course catching adults caught in the act of spawning and perhaps their carcasses that must also be somewhere there.

No, yeah, that's amazing.

You would expect that that would draw the attention of all kinds of predators going in that direction too.

eat these hundred thousands of eel carcasses that are drifting there.

And then finding eggs would be a major next step, I would say.

Which would be also interesting for us, because then we finally have a natural reference for the eggs that we find in our laboratory, because probably there are some differences, as they found for Japanese eel.

And if you know the differences, then you know what you're doing wrong, or at least what you should improve.

Well, first of all, the big goal is, of course, to close the cycle in the lab.

If we are able to reproduce eels in the lab, we can produce glass eels.

then that's not only a source for aquaculture, but you can also release the natural population from fishing pressure.

No, not yet.

So nowadays, glass eels are caught and they're raised in aquaculture to become big eels and that can be used for consumption.

But if you can produce these molecules yourself, you don't have to fish them anymore.

You can basically uncouple nature and aquaculture.

Well, other than, that's the main thing, I guess.

It's amazing that it's now 2026 and we're still dealing with this large biological mystery which has never been solved.

But if you have discovered it, it brings along a lot of knowledge that you can use to preserve this species and to help it recover from the decline that they have suffered.

Well, I think some people consider them slimy and ugly, but no, for me, they're beautiful and their life cycle shows how intriguing these animals are.