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Several possible spawning sites of the Japanese eel determined from collections of their eggs and preleptocephali

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Abstract

The spawning area of the Japanese eel is located at the southern part of the West Mariana Ridge in the western North Pacific, but their spawning events have not been observed. To further understand Japanese eel spawning ecology, an interdisciplinary research survey by the R/V NATSUSHIMA (NT14-09, 14 May–4 June 2014) was conducted to detect spawning sites based on the seamount, salinity front, new moon and third quadrant (spawning south of front, west of ridge) hypotheses. Attempts were made to film spawning events with underwater camera systems and to consider if eels might be detected in hydroacoustic observations. Although no Japanese eels or spawning events were video-recorded and no eel aggregations could be clearly identified acoustically, three eggs were collected at two stations in the third quadrant region at or just south of 13° N on 26 and 27 May. Three or four days later, newly hatched preleptocephali were collected at two stations far to the south, including 224 at a station > 160 km southwest of the egg catches, and a few preleptocephali were caught at two stations closer to the egg stations. The eggs and southern preleptocephali were from discrete spawning events, which indicated that at least two spawning sites occurred in May 2014.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the captain and crew of the R/V NATSUSHIMA for their excellent efforts and support during the NT14-09 cruise. The support of the JAMSTEC cruise administration team is greatly appreciated. We are also grateful to Masayuki Toizumi, Yohei Sakamoto, Yuta Sato, Kanako Maruyama, Ayuna Mizushima, Tsuyoshi Kaku and Moeri Miyao for helping the research efforts during the cruise. This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant numbers 21228005, 26252030, 17K19300, 19K22324 and 19H00946 to Katsumi Tsukamoto, JSPS KAKENHI Grant numbers 26450268 and 17K07921, a Grant for Scientific Research from the Faculty of Agriculture, Kindai University and Eel Foundation to Shun Watanabe, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow 20J01497 to Aya Takeuchi, and Sasakawa Scientific Research Grant from the Japan Science Society to Takatoshi Higuchi.

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Takeuchi, A., Higuchi, T., Watanabe, S. et al. Several possible spawning sites of the Japanese eel determined from collections of their eggs and preleptocephali. Fish Sci 87, 339–352 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12562-021-01519-4

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