Mysterious eels spawn by moonlight

An ancient mystery surrounding the Japanese eel, a species as prized by fishermen for its high price as it is by chefs for its delicate flesh, has been explained at last.

Like its Atlantic cousins, the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) matures in freshwater but then migrates out to sea to spawn.

But where this act is carried out has, until now, been an enigma.

The answer, says a Japanese ocean researcher today in the journal Nature, lies in a tiny triangle of the Pacific Ocean about 2000 kilometres east of the Philippines, near underwater mountains west of the Mariana Islands.

There male and female eels gather in the waning moonlight in the middle of the year, luxuriating in the balmy tropical waters.


Mysterious eels spawn by moonlight