European Eel: Life Cycle, Status and How It Differs

Yes. The European eel is a ray-finned fish in the true eel order, not a snake. It breathes with gills and has fins. National Geographic describes it as catadromous: it grows up in fresh or brackish water and returns to the ocean to spawn, the reverse of a salmon. It ranges from northern Russia and Finland to Morocco, Egypt and the Black Sea (National Geographic).

Most adults are 45 to 65 cm long and rarely pass 1 m; exceptional fish have reached 1.33 m (Wikipedia). National Geographic gives up to 52 in and 14.5 lb.

They can live a long time. The IUCN gives 15 to 20 years as typical and 85 years as the documented maximum. A Swedish eel kept in a well, the Brantevik eel, was said to have reached 155, a claim the IUCN reports as "allegedly".

The European eel passes through five stages (Wikipedia):

• Leptocephalus: a flat, leaf-shaped, transparent larva that drifts from the Sargasso Sea across the Atlantic, about 6,500 km over roughly 300 days (Wikipedia).
• Glass eel: transparent young eel arriving at European coasts.
• Elver: pigmented young eel moving into rivers.
• Yellow eel: the feeding and growing stage in fresh or brackish water, lasting about 6 to 20 years (National Geographic).
• Silver eel: the migrating adult, with a metallic sheen and larger eyes, which swims up to 6,000 km back to the Sargasso Sea (IUCN).

Much of this is still inferred. The IUCN points out that no one has ever seen a European eel spawn, and that adults are assumed to die afterwards. The full life cycle has not been completed in captivity, so eel farms depend on wild-caught young (Wikipedia).

No. They are separate species, Anguilla anguilla and Anguilla rostrata, even though both spawn in the Sargasso Sea. Their larvae end up on opposite sides of the Atlantic: American eels take 7 to 12 months to reach North American coasts (Wikipedia), while European larvae drift for about 300 days to Europe.

They look almost the same. The standard physical difference is the number of vertebrae: 110 to 120 in the European eel (USGS) against a mean of 107.2 in the American eel (Wikipedia). That needs an X-ray or dissection, so in the seafood trade the reliable test is DNA. A 2023 study in PeerJ bought 137 eel products from US retailers in nine states and found that 7 of those labelled as freshwater eel (5.2%) were European eel. In the field, location is the practical clue: an eel caught in a North American river is almost certainly American; European eels found in California waters were escaped or released imports that did not establish (USGS).

European eel is a traditional dish in many European countries and a delicacy in East Asia (IUCN), eaten smoked, stewed and grilled. The question now is less about taste than about the species: it is Critically Endangered, and fishing and export to Asian markets are among the pressures on it (National Geographic). Trade in European eel into and out of the EU has been prohibited since 2010 (IUCN).

If you want to avoid it, note that products labelled only "freshwater eel" or "unagi" do not tell you the species, which is exactly how European eel reached some US shelves in the PeerJ study. This page does not rate any eel as safe to eat; follow local health guidance and fishing rules where you live.

Wikipedia puts the fall in young eels reaching Europe at around 90%, possibly 98%, since the 1970s, and National Geographic says populations are below 1% of historic levels. The main causes named by Wikipedia, National Geographic and the IUCN:

• Dams and barriers that block migration; hydropower turbines also kill silver eels heading to sea.
• Overfishing, especially of glass eels for the Asian market.
• The parasite Anguillicola crassus, an introduced swim-bladder worm.
• Pollution, including PCBs, habitat loss and climate change.

Trade rules: the species was listed on CITES Appendix II in 2007 (IUCN). In November 2025, at CITES CoP20 in Samarkand, a proposal by the EU and Panama to list all Anguilla eels, so that look-alike species could not be used to launder European eel, was rejected by 100 votes to 35 (FishSec). Parties agreed a weaker resolution urging better protection of eels already listed.

Research and drafting for this page were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed below. Every number names the organisation it comes from, and where sources disagree we say so instead of picking one silently. Prices carry the date we checked them (25 September 2026); they change, so confirm before you rely on them. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.