ping
The late Otto Muck might have called this one, as he claimed that the life cycle of the eels was disrupted by the sinking of Atlantis. Of course, the impact of his supposed asteroid might have curtailed their activities quite a bit long before that. ;')Europe's Eels Are Slipping Away, Scientists WarnScientists there reported that the number of juvenile European eels (Anguilla anguilla) reaching rivers from their mid-Atlantic nursery grounds has crashed 99 percent since the 1970s. The closely-related American eel (Anguilla rostrata) and Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) are also threatened with extinction, experts reported... [T]here are those whose jobs depend on eels, some 25,000 fishermen in Europe alone... [D]ams, pollution, overfishing, invasive parasite species, and ocean warming have been identified as possible causes... Despite its widespread distribution and commercial importance, the life cycle of the European eel remains clouded in mystery... Remarkably, nobody has been able to locate the eels' final destination, although experts believe eels mate and die in the millions somewhere in the Sargasso Sea, a becalmed expanse of the mid-Atlantic Ocean up to three miles (five kilometers) deep. (American eels are also thought to spawn there.)
by James Owen
October 9, 2003