• Xanthrax@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    That makes sense. It’s relatively warm; there’s a bunch of seaweed, and the waters are calm.

    Edit: Wait, how was this a mystery?

    “The 1920–1922 Dana expeditions, led by Johannes Schmidt, determined that the European eel’s breeding sites were in the Sargasso Sea.”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargasso_Sea

    • IMongoose@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Hank Green can tell you the full mystery:

      https://youtu.be/acEIGorImGs?si=_xi2IF-GEssAuyZ-

      tl:dw: We knew that’s where baby eels came from but we didn’t know how the adults got there or what the larvae looked like. Baby eel larvae was misidentified as another species and adult eel can take up to 18 months traveling at the bottom of the ocean to get there, during which time they grow their gonads which was another mystery.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        From the included article-

        When it’s time to mate, eels are very determined to make it to their breeding site at the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso Sea, a two-million-square-mile span of ocean,  is the site in which all freshwater eels mate

        It’s way the hell down there in the article, though. Apparently they travel to freshwater as larva.

        Eels are freaking weird, man.

    • atocci@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      As it turns out, eels don’t grow their testes until mating season, which is why Freud was unable to find them.