The Enigma of the Eel: The Elusive Science of Earth’s Most Mysterious Creature

“Science has come up against many mysteries, but few have proven as intractable and difficult to solve as the eel.”

No one knows why they go the way they go, which is always one way, or how they get there, which is not really a there, for the Sargasso Sea is not really a sea but a patch of open ocean bounded by four mighty currents, with no clear borders, named for the brown Sargassum algae that rise from its basin like a magic forest at the bottom of the world and cover its surface with miles-...