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.
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
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.