American eel (Anguilla rostrata) is a saltwater, freshwater, brackish species recorded in the United States. It is found at depths of 0–464 m.
Scientific name: Anguilla rostrata · Water: Saltwater, Freshwater, Brackish
Size: up to 152 cm
The American eel is a demersal anguillid that occurs in streams, rivers and muddy or silt-bottomed lakes, usually in permanent streams with continuous flow, and it hides during the day in undercut banks and in deep pools near logs and boulders. It is recorded from the surface down to 464 m, and it also enters fresh and brackish water. It feeds on the larvae of mayflies, dragonflies, stoneflies, beetles, caddisflies and moths, as well as gastropods, oligochaetes, amphipods, isopods, mysids and fish. It migrates to the Sargasso Sea to spawn, and sexual maturity is reached in under ten years in some individuals and in up to 40 years in fresh water; its larvae hatch and develop at sea as transparent leptocephali before metamorphosing. Its range is the north-west to western central Atlantic, from Greenland south along the Atlantic coast of Canada and the United States to Panama, and through much of the West Indies south to Trinidad. Maximum length is about 152 cm total length, commonly about 50 cm, and it can live 43 years, maturing at about 68.5 cm. It is a commercial species, a commercial aquaculture species, a gamefish and a public aquarium fish. Fishing vulnerability is high to very high at 72 of 100 and resilience low, and climate vulnerability is high at 60 of 100. IUCN lists it as endangered.
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