Wanted- Dead or Alive, but preferably alive.

Now I want you guys to get excited about eels, especially the European Eel. They are strange creatures that swim all the way from the Sargasso Sea, where they are “born”, to Europe, from where their “parents” came from. And that without any guidance of directions or Google maps and yet they arrive in Europe.

So in the vast oceans between The Sargasso Sea and Denmark scientists have been looking for their favorite little animal and also in hope of finding a “pregnant eel mother” (fish with eggs), as these have never been found. Using a net (picture of enormous net below) and fishing by night (picture of bucket of unidentified slimy stuff) we have tried to catch it.

And this is where the students of this course have found themselves, in the middle of this search, from the Azores to Denmark. All have been excited to contribute in this search, even though it meant working at weird hours (just after sunset and just before sunrise). Just to see the fish-scientists lighting up in the sight of the small eel larvae (if you never seen a scientist excited, they look like kids on Christmas eve/morning getting just the present they were hoping for). Even an environmental engineer and a marine archaeologist can get excited about eels (picture below). 

On our search for The eel, we also found other funny animals. Below is a picture of a good friend of mine, one almost transparent and the other (looking very much the same), in a “house” covered by something that could be purple eggs.

Now I show no pictures of any of the eels, to see them you can visit the Eel expeditions Facebook page, as mentioned in the previous blog post.