Species profile
Anguilla anguilla
European eel
CR · Critically Endangered — Critically Endangered — extreme risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Critically Endangered. European eels hatch in the Sargasso Sea and swim 5,000–6,000 km to European rivers — a migration Aristotle could not explain and that took science millennia to decode. Its recorded population direction is decreasing, so the category needs to be read alongside continuing losses of individuals or local populations.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with freshwater, marine, catadromous. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. They can travel overland on wet nights, wriggling between ponds and rivers, and survive out of water for days. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
No one has ever watched a wild European eel spawn; the final act of its life, deep in the Sargasso Sea, remains one of nature's great unseen events. The catalogue records 4 principal pressures for this profile: Overfishing, Dams, Pollution, Parasites. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Protecting and reconnecting habitat is a priority, together with infrastructure planning that keeps feeding, breeding or migration routes functional. Fishery management needs enforceable limits, more selective gear, bycatch reduction and coordinated compliance across jurisdictions. Biosecurity, health surveillance and careful management of small populations help contain risks that can spread rapidly. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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