Adult (i.e. sexually mature) eels have been avoiding capture for the nearly 100 years that they have been studied. Now, Japanese scientists have become the first to capture an adult eel. They caught three specimens in June 2008 in the western North Equatorial Current (NEC) area of the western North Pacific to the west of Mariana Islands: two Japanese eel and one giant mottled eel (A. japonica and A. marmorata, respectively). The news, which has been kept a secret until now, appears in a paper in the latest issue of the journal Fish Science. The scientists used the same method as the Galathea expedition to the Sargassos Sea in 2007, i.e. fishing with a very large pelagic trawl at 200–400 m below the water surface and were successful – hearty congratulations to them. It is the first time that adult eel of any of the worlds 18 species of eel has been caught!
