Eels as favorite sea food

The eel is very well known in Europe and is most often served jellied (that is cooked and served cold in a liquid that becomes semi-solid at room temperature) or smoked. Eels are NOT hermaphrodite. This belief may have originated with Aristotle who claimed that they were 'born of earthworms'. In fact, a large part of the life cycle of the eel is spent in fresh water and the spawning stage in salt water. In Europe, the life of an eel begins in the southern Atlantic ocean in the Sargasso Sea. At first the eels do not look very much like their parents and live on plankton and other small objects. They grow to become little transparent fish (called glass eels) and make their way back to the freshwater outlets of Europe and America (there are two separate species). Once they enter fresh water, their body colour changes and they turn through gold to a silvery black. They are noted for their ability to survive in very shallow water, even wet grass. Eels spend 10 to 14 years in very shallow upstream waters eating small crutaceans, insects and earthworms and then mature and make their way back to the sea to begin their long journey of 6000 miles to the spawning grounds. Their colour becomes silver and their gut dissolves, so they cannot eat and have to rely on stored energy. Their eyes also grow in size to cope with the dim light of the ocean depths. There are other eel species, Anguilla Japonica and A. marmorata, which have a very similar life cycle based in the Pacific ocean and migrating to Japan and other rivers in Eastern Asia.