- With the eel threatened with extinction, the search for the mystery of its reproduction takes on a new dimension. What lies behind our obsession with controlling nature?
- Elusive, hidden meandering in dark mud of ditches, rivers and ponds. For centuries, we have tried to fathom the eel. But, as if our senses were inadequate, this prehistoric animal manages to slip away every time.
No one knows why the eel one day decides to swim six thousand kilometres back to the ocean where it was born, change its appearance and create sexual organs to reproduce and die somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. No human has ever seen eels mate in the wild, no one has seen an eel fertilise the eggs of another eel, no one has managed to get eels to reproduce in captivity.
With the eel facing extinction, the search for the mystery of its reproduction takes on a new dimension. An international scientific expedition to the Sargasso Sea and some biologists in a laboratory in Volendam are trying with all their might to fathom the riddle of eel reproduction.
According to Reinhold Hanel, leader of the scientific expedition, we can only save the eel by getting to know it better. For days on end, he and his colleagues search the Sargasso Sea for larvae and possibly an eel egg. Because no one has ever found an eel egg in the wild. Behind the IJsselmeerdijk near Volendam, a laboratory has been set up where biologist Rick Leemans is trying to solve the mystery of the eel by mimicking nature. He and his colleagues are working on an ambitious plan to breed glass eels via IVF. If it succeeds, the eel will be saved, is his belief.
In Japan, the eel is very popular as 'unagi'. Eel lover Kenichi Ikeda has fallen completely under the spell of the enigmatic animal, but the more he learns, the more he struggles with the paradox: if he keeps eating, he contributes to the eel's extinction; if he stops, he loses his connection with nature.
The question is whether unravelling the mystery of the eel's reproduction is the only way to save it from extinction - or is its elusiveness precisely its salvation? Perhaps we should accept that the essence of the eel is a mystery.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content