The American eel is a catadramous fish - it spends most of its life in fresh water but begins and ends its life in the sea. It is thought that Anguilla rostrata begins in the massive gyre of the Sargasso Sea, where the larval form (leptocephalli) spin off to the Eastern Americas and Western Europe. Once they arrive at the mouths of rivers, they undergo a metamorphosis. They lengthen and become tubular, but remain transparent. These tiny eels are called glass eels. As they head up river, they become yellowish brown and grow in length and girth. Eventually they find a muddy hole to live in for up to 20 years.

This half understood species is also at the center of an impressive global market. Most cultures eat eels, and while there are many eel aquaculture operations, as of yet, they have not been successfully bred in captivity. The supply is all captured from wild stocks. In the 1990’s on the coast of Maine, you could make more money fishing glass eels than you could selling heroin.

Ubiquitous and mysterious, they live a life cycle unique to their kind, and not yet fully understood by biologists. They are nearly everywhere there is freshwater, and yet very few good images of them in the wild exist, because they live in muddy habitat in cold, dark, rushing rivers. They are nocturnal and photophobic, so most of the images you see here were made at night. These images were made in the eel’s natural habitat.

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