[1] It is a marine fish with a widespread distribution in the Western Atlantic from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to northeastern Florida in United States and the northern Gulf of Mexico, and is also reported from near the mid-Atlantic island of St. Helena and off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada.

It is migratory, but although the juveniles make use of estuaries, American congers do not have a freshwater phase as do some other species of eel.

Mature individuals leave the continental shelf during the summer, cross the Gulf Stream, and make their way to the Sargasso Sea north of the Bahamas; here they spawn in floating masses of sargassum in the autumn and winter, after which they are believed to die.

The larvae are called leptocephali, and after hatching, leave the mass of algae and soon get carried along by the Gulf Stream.

Leaving the Gulf Stream they swim towards the coast where they become benthic and may enter the mouths of rivers, but as they are cryptic at this stage, they are difficult to study.