In which sea do European eels spawn?

Much of the European eel’s life history was a mystery for centuries, as fishermen never caught anything they could identify as a young eel.

This might be interesting: Eels begin their life in the ocean and spend most of their lives in fresh water, returning to the ocean to spawn and then die.

Note from history: In the early 1900s, Danish researcher Johannes Schmidt identified the Sargasso Sea as the spawning grounds. The larvae drift towards Europe in a 300-day migration. When approaching the coast, the larvae metamorphose into a transparent larval stage ("glass eel"), enter estuaries, and start migrating upstream. After entering fresh water, the glass eels metamorphose into elvers.

As the eel grows, it becomes known as a "yellow eel" due to the color of their sides and belly. After 5–20 years in fresh water, the eels become sexually mature, their flanks become silver, and their bellies white in color. In this stage, they are known as "silver eels", and they begin their migration back to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.