Endangered
American eel
Anguilla rostrata
The American eel is a facultative catadromous eel found on the eastern coast of North America.
Appearance
Females are generally larger than males, lighter in color, with smaller eyes and higher fins. Its dorsal and anal fins are confluent with the rudimentary caudal fin. The scales are small, rudimentary, cycloid, relatively well embedded below the epidermis and therefore often difficult to see without magnification.
American eels can grow to 1.22 m (4.0 ft) in length and to 7.5 kg (17 lb) in weight.
Range and habitat
The distribution of the American eel encompasses all accessible freshwater (streams and lakes), estuaries and coastal marine waters across a latitudinal range of 5 to 62 N. Their natural range includes the western North Atlantic Ocean coastline from Venezuela to Greenland and among them Iceland. Inland, this species extends into the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River and its tributaries as far upstream as Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
In 1926 Marie Poland Fish described the collection of eggs that she observed hatch into eels, that she expanded in her taxonomic description of the larval egg development. From there, young eels drift with ocean currents and then migrate inland into streams, rivers and lakes.
After reaching these freshwater bodies, they feed and mature for approximately 10 to 25 years before migrating back to the Sargasso Sea in order to complete their life cycle.The eggs hatch within a week of deposition in the Sargasso Sea. The eel lives in fresh water and estuaries and only leaves these habitats to enter the Atlantic Ocean to make its spawning migration to the Sargasso Sea.
In crisis
Like all anguillid eels, American eels hunt predominantly at night, and during the day they hide in mud, sand, or gravel very close to shore, at depths of roughly 5–6 feet (1.5–1.8 m). According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the American eel is at very high risk of extinction in the wild. Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed the status of the American eel both in 2007 and in 2015, finding both times that Endangered Species Act protection for the American eel is not warranted.
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada reported that the species was threatened in 2012. On December 2, 2025, the government of Canada chose not to list the American eel on the Species at Risk registry, finding that "the population's abundance across Canada has remained stable over the past two decades." To help A. Rostrata migrate safely, scientists are working on LED lights specifically designed to drive the eels away from dangerous obstacles or paths in their migration routes, such as hydro-electric facilities.
American eel is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on American eel, Wikidata item Q469632. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
