Populations of the American eel have massively declined in
recent years. By Douglas Main Nobody knows exactly how American
eels make it to the Sargasso Sea, a mysterious expanse of
flotsam-ridden waters in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where
the animals breed. But a recent study to chart the migration of
these enigmatic eels only deepened the mystery, when six of the
eight eels tracked with satellite tags were eaten by sharks.
Soon after the eels were tagged in Gulf of St. Lawrence, all
eight devices were found floating on the surface of the water
suggesting the animals had met an untimely end. The tags, which
record depth and temperature, revealed that before surfacing the
devices had suddenly entered an environment much warmer than the
gulf's frigid waters. Further analysis found that these
conditions could be encountered only one way: inside the body of
a porbeagle shark, according to a release from Dalhousie
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where some of the
study authors work. The study, de