American eels have for the first time been tracked migrating to the Sargasso Sea, off the coast of Bermuda.

According to a recent scientific article published in Nature Communications this week, Canadian researchers tagged a number of endangered American eels and released them off the coast of Nova Scotia, tracking their movements by satellite.

Of the 38 tagged eels, eight were successfully tracked leaving the North American continental shelf, with one travelling 2,400km in 45 days to reach the northern limit of their believed spawning site in the Sargasso Sea.

At least two eels were thought to have been eaten by predators en route — one likely by a shark and another by a Bluefin tuna.

Researchers also discovered the eels appear to have a two-stage migration path, first travelling northeast up the coast of Canada, past the Laurentian Channel, and then turning south. While it has been long suspected that both European and American eels migrate to the Sargasso Sea to breed as larvae are found in the region, no adult eels have ever been recorded in the Sargasso Sea or migrating over the open ocean in more than a century of research.

In the report, researcher Mélanie Béguer-Pon states: “Our results represent the first direct evidence of adult Anguilla migrating to the Sargasso Sea. The similarity of trajectories and behaviour of migrating eels indicate a degree of consistency in the orientation/navigation mechanism employed throughout the migration.”

A separate team studying the European eel visited the Island earlier this year in a bid to better understand their migration and breeding patterns.