The European glass eel is critically endangered. It's also one of the most smuggled animals in the world. The global black market for baby eels is worth more than 2.5 billion euros. Part of what makes them so valuable is that eels can't be bred commercially in captivity. Every glass eel entering the trade has to be caught in the wild. Scientists still don't fully understand the conditions under which eels reproduce. Adult eels are believed to spawn in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, and their young swim more than 5,000 km across the Atlantic to Europe's rivers and lakes. The conditions under which eels mate and produce offspring remain difficult to study and have not yet been successfully replicated in captivity.
Watch the full documentary "On the smugglers' trail - Making billions from tiny eels" on the DW Documentary YouTube channel.
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