‘A python in the water’: South Florida researchers sound alarm on invasive species

Miami Herald, December 23, 2025

Photo by The Everglades Foundation.

The airboat engine with long metal rods at the front sputtered to a stop as researchers stood ready with long nets off Tamiami Trail. In the afternoon sun, electrodes dipped into the shallow, coffee-colored water and released a mild current, a process called electrofishing, which temporarily stuns aquatic life so scientists can study what’s hidden below.

Moments later, a researcher scooped up a dark, ribbon-shaped fish that floated to the surface – not a native species, but an invasive Asian swamp eel. Though not yet a household name, researchers say it’s quickly become the worst enemy of the Everglades’ food web, and that it could be more destructive than the Burmese python.

“Obviously, it’s not as scary because it won’t eat you or me, right?” said Nathan Dorn, aquatic ecologist and researcher at Florida International University, “But I would say, for the wetlands, this is probably the worst invasive species that we’ve seen.”

The Everglades span across 1.5 million acres of Florida, bringing $31.5 billion into the economy, and supplying over 8 million South Floridians with fresh water. With property development, the wetland has significantly shrunk over time, leaving its native animal population to decline and incoming invasives an easier time to take over — like the Asian swamp eel.

Drought-resistant, able to survive on land, hop from puddle to puddle, and with no natural predator in the area, the eel has no bad seasons, and is able to take advantage of all that do. It starts at the bottom of the chain, damaging the ecosystem from the marsh up.

A growing threat

The population size and reproduction rates of the swamp eel are unknown for the Everglades, but the increasingly frequent sightings of the eel as they continue spreading north suggest they are becoming a large threat to the native species that have always called the wetland home.

“Welcome to Miami,” Steve Davis, the Chief Science Officer of the Everglades Foundation, joked as he gestured to the city’s westernmost boundary. Davis had just spotted what appeared to be the invasive Asian swamp eel in the beak of a great blue heron minutes prior, his first sighting of the eel in that area.

Read the full Miami Herald article here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article312418777.html

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