“The problem of the propagation and breeding places of the Common or Fresh-water Eel is one of great antiquity; from the days of Aristotle naturalists have occupied themselves therewith, and in certain regions of Europe it has exercised popular imagination to a remarkable degree.”
With these words a century ago, Johannes Schmidt began his 1923 article “The Breeding Places of the Eel,” in which he laid out the results of his attempt to solve that longstanding problem with a series of oceanic expeditions that took, he wrote, “16 or 17 years.” The mystery of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) stemmed from the fact that mature eels swim out of Europe’s rivers into the sea each year, never to return; then, in the spring, their young appear at the continent’s shores and enter its rivers. Schmidt reported that the mature eels were spawning in the western Atlantic, in an area now ...
