Epigraph
Later in the same fields
He stood at night when eels
Moved through the grass like hatched fears
—SEAMUS HEANEY
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
1. The Eel
2. By the Stream
3. Aristotle and the Eel Born of Mud
4. Looking into the Eyes of an Eel
5. Sigmund Freud and the Eels of Trieste
6. Illegal Fishing
7. The Dane Who Found the Eel’s Breeding Ground
8. Swimming against the Current
9. The People Who Fish for Eel
10. Outwitting the Eel
11. The Uncanny Eel
12. To Kill an Animal
13. Under the Sea
14. Setting an Eel Trap
15. The Long Journey Home
16. Becoming a Fool
17. The Eel on the Brink of Extinction
18. In the Sargasso Sea
Sources
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1The Eel
This is how the birth of the eel comes about: it takes place in a region of the northwest Atlantic Ocean called the Sargasso Sea, a place that is in every respect suitable for the creation of eels. The Sargasso Sea is actually less a clearly defined body of water than a sea within a sea. Where it starts and where it ends is difficult to determine, since it eludes the usual measures of the world. It’s located slightly northeast of Cuba and the Bahamas, east of the North American coast, but it is also a place in flux. The Sargasso Sea is like a dream: you can rarely pinpoint the moment you enter or exit; all you know is that you’ve been there.
This impermanence is a result of the Sargasso’s being a sea without land borders; it is bounded instead by four mighty ocean currents. In the west by the life-giving Gulf Stream; in the north by its extension, the North Atlantic Drift; in the east by the Canary Current; and in the south by the North Equatorial Current. Two million square miles in size, the Sargasso Sea swirls like a slow, warm eddy inside this closed circle of currents. What gets in doesn’t always have an easy time getting out.
The water is deep blue and clear, in places very nearly 23,000 feet deep, and the surface is carpeted with vast fields of sticky brown algae called Sargassum, which give the sea its name. Drifts of seaweed many thousands of feet across blanket the surface, providing nourishment and shelter for myriad creatures: tiny invertebrates, fish and jellyfish, turtles, shrimp, and crabs. Farther down in the deep, other kinds of seaweed and plants thrive. Life teems in the dark, like a nocturnal forest.
This is where the European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is born. This is where mature eels breed in the spring and their eggs are laid and fertilized. Here, safe in the darkness of the depths, small larva-like creatures with disturbingly tiny heads and poorly developed eyes spring to life. They’re called leptocephalus larvae and have a body like a willow leaf, flat and virtually transparent, only a few millimeters long. This is the first stage of the eel’s life cycle.
The gossamer willow leaves immediately set off on their journey. Swept up by the Gulf Stream, they drift thousands of miles across the Atlantic toward the coasts of Europe. It’s a journey that can take as long as three years; during this time, each larva slowly grows, millimeter by millimeter, like a gradually inflating balloon, and when at last it reaches Europe, it undergoes its first metamorphosis, transforming into a glass eel. This is the second stage of the eel’s life cycle.
Glass eels are, much like their willow leaf former selves, almost entirely transparent, two to three inches in length, elongated and slithery, transparent, as though neither color nor sin has yet to take root in their bodies. They look, in the words of the marine biologist Rachel Carson, like “thin glass rods, shorter than a finger.” Frail and seemingly defenseless, they are considered a delicacy by, among other people, the Basques.
When a glass eel reaches the coasts of Europe, it will usually travel up a brook or river, adapting almost instantly to a freshwater existence. This is where it undergoes yet another metamorphosis, turning into a yellow eel. Its body grows serpentine and muscular. Its eyes remain relatively small, with a distinctive dark center. Its jaw becomes wide and powerful. Its gills are small and almost completely concealed. Thin, soft fins stretch along the entirety of its back and belly. Its skin finally develops pigment, coloring it shades of brown, yellow, and gray, and it becomes covered in scales so tiny they can be neither seen nor felt, like an imaginary armor. If the glass eel is tender and fragile, the yellow eel is strong and sturdy. This is the third stage of the eel’s life cycle.
The yellow eel is able to move through the shallowest, most overgrown waters as well as the swiftest currents. It can swim through murky lakes and up tranquil streams, up wild rivers and through lukewarm ponds. When needed, it can pass through swamps and ditches. It doesn’t let circumstance stand in its way, and when all aquatic possibilities have been exhausted, it can take to dry land, slithering through moist brush and grass in pushes toward new waters that can last for hours. The eel is, thus, a fish that transcends the piscine condition. Perhaps it doesn’t even realize it is a fish.
It can migrate thousands of miles, unflagging and undaunted, before it suddenly decides it’s found a home. It doesn’t require much of this home; the environs are something to adapt to, to endure and get to know—a muddy stream or lake bed, preferably with some rocks and hollows to hide in, and enough food. Once it has found its home, it stays there, year after year, and normally wanders within a radius of only a few hundred yards. If relocated by external forces, it will invariably return as quickly as it can to its chosen abode. Eels caught by researchers, tagged with radio transmitters, and released many miles from their point of capture have been known to return to where they were first found within a week or two. No one
