The amazing journey of eels

Emma Chaplin
, 07 October 2021
The amazing journey of eels
Eel © Derek Middleton

When I've led walks around Sussex, I've loved telling people stories about the amazing wildlife with whom we share our county. But there is one animal whose life story is just so astounding and preposterous that I’m sure people must think that I’m making it up.  

Let me take you 3500 miles west to the wide Sargasso Sea, an area of the North Atlantic known to superstitious sailors (and Barry Manilow fans) as The Bermuda Triangle. Today the once mythical Sargasso is infamous for being the North Atlantic’s waste dump where surface currents deposit our non-degradable floating flotsam. But the Sargasso still holds one last mystery. Each year millions of transparent slithers- like a blizzard of tiny polythene leaves – rise from its depths. It’s almost as if the seaweed and the spirits of sunken sailors have merged with the PVC and plastic to create the leptocephali; the larval stage of the European Eel.  These see-through seafarers go with the flow and slowly drift across the North Atlantic on a three-year Gulf Stream cruise.  

Upon reaching Britain’s coastal waters their appearance changes. They are now wriggling transparent tubes with black eyes; ‘glass eels’. Riding the Rother, Ouse, Cuckmere, Arun and Adur they swim upstream. In these brackish waters their bodies darken; a tidal tan. They are now elvers. They finally make it to their Sussex holiday homes exchanging saltwater for freshwater in the myriad of streams and brooks that feed our county’s rivers. Yellow-bellied and small-eyed these are yellow eels and will holiday in Sussex's ponds and lakes for around 15 to 30 years. But, as with all holidays, the day comes when you have to return home. In the depths of the eel’s mind a primeval urge is awakened. The Sargasso is calling. Their bodies harden, their eyes widen, their stomachs shrivel and yellow eels become silver eels and start their epic journey home. Nothing gets in their way. Even dry land, traditionally an inconvenient barrier for a fish, does not stop them. On dark, wet nights the silver eels crawl out of the water, slithering snake-like across fields and back into the river system. 

They’ll pass Rye, Shoreham, Exceat, Newhaven and Littlehampton and head out over the great Atlantic Shelf and into darkness. Here’s where the silver eels vanish. Exactly where they go is unknown. Yet each year the Sargasso will mysteriously spawn a new cloud of transparent tourists hellbent on holidaying in Sussex by the Sea.

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Comments

  • Mac Poulton:

    I wonder what variety of eel I pulled out of the stream at Woods Mill some years ago when I was assisting the School group with stream dipping. We took it to the classroom to show everyone, it escaped briefly to everyone’s amusement and was quickly returned to the stream.

    07 Oct 2021 10:58:00

  • Jenny Simmons:

    Fascinating story! I’m wondering, if we don’t know the route they take, how do we know they definitely came from the Sargasso sea? I know eels in general are an endangered species: does that include our yellow Sussex eels?

    07 Oct 2021 20:18:00

  • carol williams:

    a magical description , fit for an eel !
    thank you, I will save it and pass it on to many children, of many ages.

    07 Oct 2021 21:44:00

  • LS:

    Story-telling of ecological life cycles like this should be mandatory in schools…fascinating!

    13 Oct 2021 16:33:00

  • andy parker:

    I watched an angler catch one last night (he weighed and put it back) in the sea off Littlehampton west beach – it was an amazing looking thing – about three or four feet long, and this article, along with others, confirms what I thought about the species I saw.

    31 Jan 2025 23:40:00

  • Mary campbell:

    Saw an eel in a rock pool at peacehaven yesterday. Stranded half out of water must have been for several hours by falling tide (tide was rising again by time we saw it) Made a passage out to sea and it wriggled over pebbles to swim away. Black/very dark brown, no silver, maybe 2 cm diameter, about 0.5 metres long.

    20 Apr 2025 09:10:00

  • Jeremy Reffin:

    We found a two foot silver eel frozen solid lying in the grass in the marshy area at the bottom of our garden this morning. The dog ate the rear half with some gusto before we could wrestle it from her.

    05 Jan 2026 21:35:00

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