Japanese Freshwater Eel Puzzle Solved
Agençe France-Presse
ABC Science Online, Australia
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An ancient mystery surrounding the Japanese eel, a species as prized by fishermen for its high price as it is by chefs for its delicate flesh, has been explained at last. Like its Atlantic cousins, the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) matures in freshwater but then migrates out to sea to spawn.
But where this act is carried out has, until now, been an enigma.The answer, says a Japanese ocean researcher today in the journal Nature, lies in a tiny triangle of the Pacific Ocean about 2000 kilometres east of the Philippines, near underwater mountains west of the Mariana Islands.
There male and female eels gather in the waning moonlight in the middle of the year, luxuriating in the balmy tropical waters. University of Tokyo scientist Professor Katsumi Tsukamoto collected newly-hatched eels during a research trip aboard an oceanographic vessel, the Hakuho Maru, last year.
The creatures were still in a microscopic larval state and could only be identified with a DNA test.The scientist pinpointed their spawning site as 14° north, 142° east, to the west of the Suruga seamount in the southern part of the West Mariana Ridge.The eels had hatched about four days before the new moon of June 2005.
feb 22, 2006
Agençe France-Presse
ABC Science Online, Australia
_____________________
An ancient mystery surrounding the Japanese eel, a species as prized by fishermen for its high price as it is by chefs for its delicate flesh, has been explained at last. Like its Atlantic cousins, the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) matures in freshwater but then migrates out to sea to spawn.
But where this act is carried out has, until now, been an enigma.The answer, says a Japanese ocean researcher today in the journal Nature, lies in a tiny triangle of the Pacific Ocean about 2000 kilometres east of the Philippines, near underwater mountains west of the Mariana Islands.
There male and female eels gather in the waning moonlight in the middle of the year, luxuriating in the balmy tropical waters. University of Tokyo scientist Professor Katsumi Tsukamoto collected newly-hatched eels during a research trip aboard an oceanographic vessel, the Hakuho Maru, last year.
The creatures were still in a microscopic larval state and could only be identified with a DNA test.The scientist pinpointed their spawning site as 14° north, 142° east, to the west of the Suruga seamount in the southern part of the West Mariana Ridge.The eels had hatched about four days before the new moon of June 2005.
feb 22, 2006
