The Eel Enigma was first noted by the Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt (1877-1933) at the beginning of the 20th century. The American eel spawns in the western part of the Sargasso Sea and their European relatives in the eastern sector. When the larvae hatch, the European eels are carried on the Gulf Stream towards Europe; a trip that takes about three years. The survivors of this long journey split up when they reach the shores of Europe. The males remain at sea and the females swim up the rivers and remain there for two years. They then rejoin the males and return together to the Sargasso where they mate, after a short journey of only one hundred and forty days.

A number of investigators, such as Otto Muck, have cited this mystery of nature as the result of the eels ’remembering’ a former landmass in the middle of the Atlantic. These writers have equated this landmass with Atlantis. However, a landmass is not what the eels require but the protective cover provided by the seaweed of the Sargasso while mating. I find it hard to accept this eel theory, although many find it credible. Perhaps millions of years ago before the tectonic plates had separated the European and American continents as far as they are today, the eels had originally only a short distance to travel. Over the ages, the journey became longer until it is now close to the physical limitations of the creatures.

A similar observation was made by Henry Eichner who pointed out the existence of shellfish in the Sargasso which is normally found in shallow waters along shorelines. Eichner suggested that this adaptation by the shellfish may be evidence for the existence of an earlier shoreline now lost through inundation!

More recently, Daniel Schwamm added a related claim in a 2012 paper – “There are many animals that are guided by a primal instinct to find their way to where Atlantis is said to have once been. For example, the lobsters of the Azores move unerringly to the west, deeper and deeper into the sea, as if they expected a rise in the seabed there sooner or later.”^(b)

Equally intriguing but unconnected to any Atlantis claim is the migratory path of monarch butterflies^(a).

^(a) Butterflies remember a mountain that hasn’t existed for millennia (archive.org) *

^(b) http://www.daniel-schwamm.de/index.php?pg=texte/atlantis.htm