Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish

by James Prosek

Tour through the life history and cultural associations of the freshwater eel, exploring its biology in streams and epic migrations in the ocean, its myth and lore, its mystery and beauty. Prosek travels the globe to tell the story of the eel--from New York to New Zealand; from Europe to Japan and the small island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, where freshwater eels are worshipped by members of the eel clan.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Animals, Natural History, Biology, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 21, 2010

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah I know, there are two reactions to the notion of eels. First there is fear when one thinks of large, oceanic moray eels popping up out of some hidden coral niche to snatch a chunk out of your leg as you swim by. Second is “eeewww.” This is for the slippery guys who inhabit rivers, streams and extreme restaurants. Get over it.


James Prosek - from NPR

James Prosek’s Eels is a fascinating look at an unappreciated creature. Did you know that scads of eels migrate from freshwater streams and rivers to mid-ocean to spawn? The location of the Pacific spawning ground is still unknown, (or at least unrevealed) but they head for the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic. The author attempted to keep eels once, but their wanderlust resulted in them damaging themselves trying to escape. The urge to get back to the sea can also result in the major YouTube wet dream of giant eel balls (no, Beavis, not oversized fish nads, but masses of intertwined critters, cavorting in a movable orgy) rolling their way over dry land to get to the ocean. It is probably a good idea to step aside.


from fishermensvoice.com

Prosek offers wonderful profiles of people for whom the eel is a major part of their lives, scientists, eelers, eco-warriers, South Sea Islanders. Ray Turner is a back-woods sort in Pennsylvania who makes a living as an eeler from a year’s worth of work and a few nights of harvest. A large part of the book looks at the significance of the eel in Maori culture. This is quite eye-opening. Think buffalo and Plains Indians. He writes also of how the Japanese regard the eel and manages to find a flight to the very remote Micronesian island of Pohnpei, mentioned to him by a few of the people he interviewed for the book. It is a place of great significance in eel legend. Eels are reputed to be able to make sounds like barking dogs and crying babies, and are ascribed magical powers beyond that. Way cool. He also looks at the activities of conservationists who are trying to spare these remarkable creatures from extinction.


a Moray eel from howstuffworks.com - not just another pretty face

Catches of eels are plummeting worldwide, the result of dams, overfishing, and the usual human fouling of natural waterways, increasing the need for information about the eel life-cycle so that this important fish (yes, eels are fish) can be preserved.

Prosek’s book is, in short, great fun. By the time I finished I could honestly say, “I’ve been slimed,” but in a good way. This book was released in 2009. It is definitely worth your while trying to locate a copy and when you do, don’t let your chance to learn about these fascinating creatures slip away.

Review posted in June 2010 - updated December 2013

Cross-posted at Coot's Reviews

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Prosek's web site

There is a video on PBS featuring Prosek, The Mystery of Eels that is definitely worth a look, although it is refreshing to see that there is something that this renaissance man, (yeah, he plays music too, in addition to being an accomplished artist and scientist) is not great at, voice-overs. The content and visuals more than make up for Prosek's stolid delivery.

12/3/13 - Gillian Anderson, in full eel attire, promoting conservation - must see

6/19/14 - Definitely check out the link posted by Jaye in comment #33 - a fabulous, and amusing, science article on eels, and the wonderful, cinematic, LOL link posted by Richard in comment #35

12/5/14 - an interesting NY Times report on new science regarding our highly charged slippery pals - The Surprising Power of an Electric Eel’s Shock - by Carl Zimmer

10/5/16 - European researchers have been looking into when European eels arrive at their once-in-a-lifetime mating extravaganza in the Sargasso Sea On Epic Spawning Migration, Eels May Travel at Their Own Pace - by Stephen Yin - The Science section of the NY Times

7/14/2017 - Oregon gets slimed - must-see report from NatGeo - 'Slime Eels' Explode on Highway After Bizarre Traffic Accident - By Jason Bittel

7/1/20 - The Paris Review - Ashes to Ashes, Eel to Eel - By Patrik Svensson -- On Eels in literature

8/14/20 - National Geographic - Shocking behavior: How electric eels zap their prey by Diana Marques

9/25/20 - Time Magazine -Keeping It Eel: How One Historian Is Using Twitter and Medieval Factoids to Help Endangered Animals by Olivia B. Waxman - a fun look at historian John Wyatt Greenlee who tracks the role of eels in history


European eel elvers for a reintroduction swimming in a large holding tank in Gloucester, U.K - image and text from above article (watch your step)

1/14/21 - Electric Eels Hunt in Packs, Shocking Prey and Scientists by Annie Roth

[Florence (Lefty) MacIntosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raised in Ontario, Canada as a kid I hated swimming. Mom never learned, she preferred to stay safely on shore and shout out dire warnings about snapping turtles & eels. At least the snappers swam on the surface, I'd see them coming but the eels? Horrible, slimy creatures of the night that slithered unseen in the dark murky water. I still shudder! It opens with “The eel is not an easy fish to like”
No kidding… Read it hoping I’d get over my fear, finished it creeped out as ever - and utterly fascinated.

• Monstrous: The Europeon conger up to 10 ft long weighing in at 240 lb.
• Ancient: Some have a lifespan of over a hundred years and don’t produce offspring till they’re over 60.
• Deadly: A tiny amount of eel blood is enough to kill you, pass on the eel sushi...
• Mysterious: They migrate en masse, in the Catskills “The run corresponds with the new moon and floods brought on by the hurricane season, when the sky is at its darkest and the river at its highest” Yearly millions of eels around the world migrate from rivers to oceans, among the "greatest unseen migrations of any creature on the planet”
Just picture this! “On wet nights, eels are known to cross over land from a pond to a river by the thousands, using each other’s moist bodies as a bridge, to climb moss-covered vertical walls forming a braid with their bodies.”
• Illusive: We’ve yet to find a spawning adult or witnessed a freshwater eel spawning in the wild. For eel scientists, solving the mystery of eel reproduction remains a kind of holy grail. All they know is they spawn somewhere in the Sargasso Sea in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle – yeh, the infamous Bermuda Triangle, how spooky is that?
• Mystical: Why this book sang for me - his passionate quest to understand the mystical role, the spiritual importance that Eels play in so many native cultures.
• Most Frightening: That they're gone and I had no idea "The St. Lawrence River feeding into Lake Ontario once comprised the single largest nursery in North America. Now almost no eels are returning at all." Damn those dams. My poor planet - death by a thousand paper cuts.

10 years in the writing Prosek outgrows some of his arrogance. Liked that this Yale grad formed a lasting and respectful friendship with "old river rat" Ray who works an eel weir in the Catskill Mountains. Ray chose a life most would write off as too hard, too lonely. "I told Ray I admired the way he lived. “Don’t look up to me, kid,” he said “look with me.” and Prosek did.
4 ½ slimy stars and a big thanks to Will for the review that led me to it.

CONS: Think Carlos Castaneda obsessed with fish. His writing is kinda all over the place, shifts without warning between fact and folklore. Fine, I enjoyed it - just wish he’d been a little clearer. FYI: Eels don’t bark like dogs, nor do they cry like babies…trust me, I googled it:)

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eels are fascinating and mysterious, and James Prosek says he spent eleven years working on this book about them. Too bad all of the material he obtained was not in the hands of a better writer. Too bad, also, that the author became more interested in the folklore about eels than about eels themselves. I was hoping to learn a lot more about eels. Instead, I learned a lot more about James Prosek and his quest to pry stories out of people who did not really want to tell them. How frustrating! There are some fascinating facts in this short book, but there is also a lot of chaff and, in the end, a lot less about eels than one would expect after all that research.

[Eric_W · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books like this. Take some obscure or mundane topic or subject and dissect it to the nth degree. I doubt if anyone reading this really has a fondness for those slippery, slimy creatures, and yet it turns out they are singularly fascinating. “The freshwater eel, of the genus Anguilla, evolved more than fifty million years ago, giving rise to fifteen separate species. Most migratory fish, such as salmon and shad, are anadromous, spawning in freshwater and living their adult lives in salt water. The freshwater eel is one of the few fishes that does the opposite, spawning in the sea and spending its adulthood in lakes, rivers, and estuaries—a life history known as catadromy (in Greek ana- “means “up” and cata- means “down,” the prefixes suggesting the direction the fish migrates to reproduce).* But among catadromous fishes, the eel is the only one that travels to the depths of the oceans so far offshore. . . .No one has ever been able to find a spawning adult or witness a freshwater eel spawning in the wild. For eel scientists, solving the mystery of eel reproduction remains a kind of holy grail.” And they determinedly try to return to their ocean origins. Place some in an aquarium and they will try every way possible to squirm their way out. If there is no way, they die.

Interesting people abound. Ray, for example, a hermit (or recluse, if you prefer) who lives in a shack off the Delaware river and has a permit, which he inherited from his father, to operate an eel weir. Every year (he has a degree in engineering) he carefully rebuilds the stone weir, repositioning the stones into walls (every year they are destroyed by ice and flooding.) All in preparation for the September run. A good year will yield 2,500 eels weighing on average .85 pounds each. He puts them in salt to kill them then turns them in a cement mixer filled with gravel to get the slime off, guts them with a knife and hot-smokes them to restaurants and passersby saving a few for personal eating. Fascinating.

Eels are relentless in their efforts to return to their "ocean womb." Just try keeping some in an aquarium sometime. They'll be all over your floor. In New Zealand, where the Maori have a long symbiotic relationship with eels, they have been known to roll up in balls to get across land masses and try to get through hydraulic dam generators. Tradition has it they will live for centuries waiting for some typhoon to wash them out to sea from some land-locked pond or lake. For the Maori, it's one of the highest sources of protein for them so when the British, in the guise of the Acclimatization Society stocked everything with trout only to discover eels love trout, they embarked on a vast "kill the eels" program, with detailed instructions on how best to do it on every fishing license. The result was much the same as the campaign that killed off most of the buffalo.

Of course there were unintended consequences. Turns out killing the eels meant the trout, having no natural predatory exploded in population. "The trout in eel-free rivers had become more numerous, yes, but the average size was much smaller. In the 1950s, a biologist named Max Burnett studying the interaction of trout and eels in the streams of Canterbury discovered that the eel, maligned and needlessly slaughtered, was actually in part responsible for the now world-famous trout fishing in New Zealand. By preying on the trout, the eel was culling a population that soon became overpopulated and stunted without them. With the eels in the rivers, the trout were fewer but much larger. Burnett’s work showed that the presence of eels was beneficial and single-handedly turned around public opinion of them. The killing stopped. " And now New Zealand is again celebrated for its trout fishing.

That doesn't mean the Maori can't be cruel to the eels: " People who smoke eel usually leave the skin on the fish but remove the unappetizing slime with salt, ash, or detergent. Even Ray, who had worked in slaughterhouses his whole life, admitted their method was cruel—removing their protective slime while suffocating them.* The eels reacted by writhing and rolling in the dry detergent, trying to use their tails to get it off their bodies, but it only spread the caustic powder. When the eels were dead Ray rubbed them down with a sugar sack to remove any leftover slime, snipped their tails to bleed them, and hung them by their heads. "

Let's be clear; I wouldn't be caught dead preparing or eating eel (more on death from preparing eel in a bit.) But it does have healthful benefits: "Eel meat has well-known health-giving properties.* It is high in vitamins A and E, containing four times more vitamin A than cheese and eight times more than egg, six times more vitamin E than cheese and three times more than egg. Vitamin A is good for human skin. Vitamin E helps prevent aging. Eel is also rich in fish oils that contain antioxidants to aid the immune system and fight sickness. Because of its high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids, eel has been found to help prevent type 2 diabetes. A native of Kyoto told me, “They have a saying in Kyoto—that the girls have beautiful skin because they eat eel.”

Well, maybe. As note above, preparing eel comes with several risks. The blood contains a strong neurotoxin so getting it into one's blood stream through a cut or opening in the skin can cause death. One cubic centimeter of eel blood injected into a rabbit, "causes instant convulsions and death." That's one reason why it's always served smoked or cooked and never raw. Whoopi-do.

Shades of John McPhee (high praise, indeed)

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of their long journey the parents spawn
And die
As their children take the ocean currents back
To East Asian rivers from Mariana.
Adults and young both knowingly make their way alone
And through this travel, life is handed down.
For millions of years, birth and death repeats.
It is relentless.
Why do they do these kinds of things?
Why do they choose this hard life?
Why do living creatures live?
Why do living creatures die?
—Katsumi Tsukamoto

The author is not a poet but a Japanese scientist. The subject of his poem is not some alluring cousin of the salmon, but the oft-maligned eel.

Even the layperson's biological perception of the eel is misunderstood, as Prosek points out. The family of fresh water eels is distinct from both lamprey eels and electric eels. The freshwater eel is a migratory creature but unlike the salmon, spawns in the ocean, migrates to fresh water where it spends most of its life, and then returns to the oceanic location where it was born in order to spawn. Almost everything else about this elusive fish remains a mystery. Credible stories tell of migrating eels traversing the land (like amphibians, they can absorb oxygen through their skin, as long as they are kept wet), “braiding” in order to ascend barriers, and forming tight balls to roll down hills. Science cannot tell us how the eels anticipate the weather conditions that will facilitate travel, how they navigate back to the location where they were spawned, how they mate, how they lay their eggs, or what the newborn larva eat. The larvae stage (referred to as glass eels because of their transparent bodies) looks so unlike the adult stage that they were once thought to be a separate fish. Their mass migrations are spectacular events reflecting a hidden dynamic of ocean forces. They are ancient creatures, having been around for some 200 million years and their behavior may reflect a memory of that ancient geography.

None of these facts, however, quite captures the beguiling effect Prosek kindles with this book. Among the areas he visits is the South Island of New Zealand where the eel holds a prominent place in Maori folklore. The Maori characterize themselves as Morehu — survivors, like the eel. The stories they tell are embellished with personal touches and brought to life by oral artistry and the intimate immediacy of live theater. There are special eels that are guardians — Taniwha , which must be fed and given offerings. They enforce tapus, can change form, give warnings. To ignore them is to court sickness, misfortune or death. These eel are different from the ones that are caught and eaten. An eerie aura to these stories is added when some of the Maori mention that the sounds the eels make at night can resemble the barking of a dog or the cry of a baby. Prosek skillfully intertwines the history of the Maori, their connection to the land, and the eel's connection to both in his narrative.

Prosek's travels take him around the world. In Japan he visits laboratories and the Tsukiji fish market. He visits Pohnpei, a Micronesian island where the eel is considered sacred among the native Lasialap.

The eel is an object of scientific interest. There has been a noticeable decline in eastern North American eel populations. They transport the larvae of a common species of fresh water mussel that can filter more than two billion gallons of water per mile per day. Collapse of the eel population will lead to collapse of the mussel population. Eels are also a multi-billion dollar commodity linking American and European fisheries, Chinese eel farms and Japanese buyers. More than 130,000 tons per year of eel are consumed in Japan alone, where specialized eel restaurants flourish. It is this commercial interest that funds scientific research. Prosek quotes Mike Miller, a researcher with the University of Tokyo Department of Marine Bioscience: “'The food supports the science. If they didn't eat eel in Japan, I wouldn't be here.'” (p.154) This reality provokes a re-evaluation of science. Pure science and applied science are inseparable in today's environment of high-stakes funding.

The proof of Prosek's eloquence is the reader's own journey from ignorance and indifference to admiration for the eel. There is an unsettling feeling when Prosek tours a Japanese slaughterhouse for eels. That feeling is even worse when Doug Watts describes the carnage wrought by hydrodams on the Maine waterways. When Watts contacts the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the response is that there's no legal violation. Watts is referred to the owner of the dam and receives predictable results.

It is the responsibility of all of us to reconsider the ethical consequences of our actions. Prosek's book points out how that responsibility has been relinquished: Governments, corporations, and even science are not ruled by ethics. This is the message he relays in his final chapter, “Obstacles in Their Path.”

Unquestionably, Prosek has created a story that is about more than science or history. Kelly Davis, a Maori, asked at a scientific conference: “'Our ancestors have known for thousands of years that the glass eels come up the river in spring, and the adults migrate out in the fall. Why do you need to know where they go? What good will it do the fish to find the house where they breed?'" (p.26). Prosek echoes that sentiment when he admits: “That's the greatest beauty I find in eels: the idea of a creature whose very beginnings can elude humans, and the potential that idea holds for our imaginations.” (p.9)

NOTE: Website of Tim and Doug Watts
http://www.glooskapandthefrog.org/eel...

[♥ Sandi ❣ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

I needed a book about New Zealand and thought 'why not learn something at the same time?' So opted for this book.

An eel is a fish - one that can cross land, are a major food for Asians, are worshiped in some cultures and can live in both fresh and salt water. They live in all waters from our local oceans to those in New Zealand, from Japan to Europe. They are also declining in numbers. Their biggest predators are humans, dams and climate change.

This book has a number of good illustrations along with immediate notes at the bottom of the needed page. Referred to as a mysterious fish, probably the most unknown of all - here since time unknown and unless we manage to kill it ourselves it will be here probably longer than human civilization.

[Jake Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned more about this dude's dad than about eels.

[Justine Olawsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eels. Hmm. Whoda thunk?

I thought this would be a "science-lite" book of the sort that I like to read, but it was quite different from that. It was more of an extended musing, a meditation if you will, on how a truly mysterious fish that is determined to keep its secrets survives when it clashes with what Aristotle called that very human "desire to know." Mr. Prosek pretty much admits that we still do not know—after millennia of living with eels widespread across our freshwater realms—much about them at all. The first chapter lays out everything we do know, think we might know, and suppose must be so. And that's the science part of it. Then, Mr. Prosek leads the reader on a mystical journey across several different cultures and how they interpret and value the eel. He spends a long time with the Maori of New Zealand, a bit of time with the Japanese, and a truly delightful sojourn with the Micronesian people of Pohnpei. Interwoven with these narratives is the character of Ray Turner, a crusty mountain man of the Catskills who paces the rhythm of his life with the seasons of the eels—whiling his days in the endless cycles of preparing for, capturing, and harvesting from the spawning run of the elusive snakelike fish.

One thing is certain: the eels are safe from me. Even with Mr. Prosek's most enticing descriptions of the many ways he ate eels on his quest, I still do not think anything but the most hopeless of hunger could drive me to sample their slimy flesh. God speed, fair eels. May you keep your secrets long and ever find your way back to the salty spawning Sargasso Sea.

[Lewis Summers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this to be a bit of a let down. The author seemed to have much more sympathy for and interest in white, American eel fishers than Māori eel fishers simply because the white Americans were more welcoming/friendly to him, a white American. He also pulled punches like crazy in his chapters about Japanese overfishing of native eels.

[Bruce Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a New Zealander who used to catch eels the book was a revelation to me. I had no idea how intimately woven eels were with Maori culture. I lived in Japan and ate eel on eel day, which involved overcoming some inner resistance, because as Prosek rightly states, (white) New Zealanders just do not eat eels. A book which takes readers down unaccustomed paths.

[Sasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a fan of this author’s writing style when he tries to recount the stories and experience with the Māori people or tries to narrate interviews with accents. Also not a great read on a kindle with the footnotes but that’s on me (but the poor choice in the author basically having mini chapters and side stories within the footnotes is on him). But the book has given me an appreciation for eels with a newfound sympathy for the sea creature and how humanity has poorly treated it for the sake of science and food.

[Tati · Rating 4 out of 5]

The length of time it took me to finish this book is not indicative of its quality.

[Jacqueline Quackenbush · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very different than I was expecting, which was a mostly science orientated book. In contrast, this book, while highlighting the basics of known biology of the eel, such as its unique habit of spawning in salt water while living out its life in fresh water, is more greatly focused on the cultural and economic significance these creature have towards various people.

Now, despite being different than I expected, I did enjoy this book. It follows the quest of the author to learn more about the natural history of the eel, a fish widely misunderstood, reviled, worshipped and eaten throughout the world. Living in the modern world like we do I think most people labor under the misconception that we know pretty much all there is to know about…well, everything. I think this is exactly why I liked this book; it very clearly demonstrates how little we have yet to learn about a fish that is such an integral part of many different peoples’ lives in various capacities which is an important concept for people to understand. It’s this very knowledge that spurs investigation and research in new generations, something we sorely need. In addition to that, the quest for the currently unknown spawning grounds of the eel is set against the backdrop of differing cultural opinions. While people like the Maori find such information unimportant, some scientists have dedicated hundreds of hours trying to solve the mystery. Which perspective is right? Should we seek out this knowledge for its own sake and, possibly in future, have it stored away to help save this diminishing fish? Or should we simply leave it be? Regardless of any personal opinion, these are important questions to ask and should be more widely discussed in scientific circles.

My only complaint would be that despite the author not being himself a scientist, it would not have taken much more research to include a bit more scientific information to put the eel in a better ecological, and not solely cultural, perspective. After being shown the importance the eel has for native people of nature based faiths and the economic importance it holds for people like the Taiwanese fish salesman, Johnathan, the declining population of the eel really strikes home for the reader. This is no longer the possible extinction of an obscure and weird fish but the possible disappearance of a creature vastly important to many people. That being said, when one species goes extinct, or even simply declines, there are always a host of ecological effects that follow. But this is not discussed at all. Yes, the book is about eels, but just as the eels have significance for people that make it important to save, it also has importance to other species within its ecosystem and I think the book would have been much more well-rounded had such information been included.

All in all, it is an entertaining and easy read that has a lot to offer readers. If you have the opportunity, definitely give it a try.

This review is also posted here: http://theacademicjawa.com/?p=291

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I'm plowing through these books this fast. I really am reading them, but 200 pages to an insomniac just isn't that big a deal.

If I wasn't a huge "eel fan" before, this didn't make me love the guys...they are still super creepy. But they are also fascinating.

Salmon from different rivers are different. They have genetically isolated and differentiated themselves from other salmon from other places. Eels, on the other hand, are basically the same across Europe and across Eastern North America. That's because they all seem to spawn in the same place--the Sargasso Sea (Asian eels have another unknown place). I saw "seem" because that's where scientists have found the youngest eel larvae--but no one is completely sure. Eels keep their secrets really well.

So they begin life in saltwater, migrate to fresh to live out their days, then decide its time to have baby eels, go back to saltwater, and then (we think) die.

But this book isn't just about the science and mystery of eels. It's about the immense cultural importance of eels, from the willingness of some cultures to pay an eels weight in gold to eat them, to the Maori in New Zealand who see them as guardians, to the Pohnpei residents who believe they are descended from eels and wouldn't eat an eel any more than I would eat a kitten.

This is a fascinating book, with a lot (and I do mean a lot) of dead eels.

[Ann Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! I saw Prosek give a talk about his eel research some years ago and planned to get to this book, then forgot about it. It's not as if I am naturally all that curious about fish or eels, but this was a fascinating and truly informative read that touches on biology, ecology, history, anthropology, and more. It's full of surprises and well worth reading.

[Kerri Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short review: The eel parts were intensely interesting to me. The rest of the book? Not so much.

The longer explanation: Parts of this book were fantastic, filled to the brim with information I was endlessly fascinated by. What eels look like, how they move, when they migrate, what they eat, who eats them, why both freshwater and oceanic ecosystems need them, how we've overfished them (like we've overfished any and every sort of seafood humans prefer to eat anywhere on earth), how they need protection if they, like so many fish, are going to survive us—I'm perpetually here for all of that. All the time. More of that, please.

The parts that really didn't work for me centered on the author wanting to romanticize, trivialize, and/or summarize people and cultures he had extremely limited experience with, for the sake of furthering his own 11-year eel adventure.

I don't begrudge anyone their adventures, and the growing pains associated with synthesizing adventures into instructive, interesting, and readable pages if you want to write a book about said adventures (eel or otherwise). But in a book called "Eels" I'd just prefer fewer stories about kooky dudes who fish and cook and commune with eels and more stories about actual eels. (Also, in my opinion the section on New Zealand was way too long, being that it was nearly half the book.)

[Two stars for teaching me more about eels than I knew before picking up this book + one star for gorgeous cover art = three stars.]

[Laurie Jodice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book and learning about human culture around eels, especially in the Pacific. I would have liked to hear more from the perspective of fisheries managers but appreciated discussion about ESA listing (which would make a good teaching case for a fisheries management/policy class). The details on management and status are now a bit dated so be sure to look up current status (IUCN has American Eel listed as endangered). For example, see: https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/a...

[Serge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eel in global perspective

I enjoyed this cultural history of eels much more than the 2020 book of the same title. I thought the iterative approach to unfolding the significance of the del in New Zealand/ Micronesia was well done. The juxtaposition with live on the weir in North America made for enlightening contrast.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvellous travelogue on the planet to present stories of eels.

[Allie · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5, fully not enough about actual eels and the author got real irritating to me as the book went on.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eels. Now that's not something you read a book about every day and list as a favorite. I checked this book out of the library, assuming it would be mainly a reference book, but instead, it was a page-turner. The author himself started out thinking he'd write more of a world eel recipe book and ended up writing about eels and the culture surrounding them in places in the world where they're an important part of life. And the author, James Prosek, has a quiet yet effective way of ferreting out the stories of these cultures. He goes into their world, listens, drinks the local drink of choice, and tries to blend in as unobtrusively as possible to hear what they have to say about a creature whose people are as fascinating as the creature itself.

I first became curious about eels when I was reading My Family and Other Animals and learned that all freshwater eels in Europe and North America migrate to the Sargasso Sea (in the Bermuda Triangle area) to spawn and die. Then the babies born in the Sargasso migrate back to freshwater rivers and streams to live their lives before returning to where they were born in the Sargasso to spawn and die. You'll also perhaps remember that Bertha from Jane Eyre is from the Sargasso and that her story is told in Wide Sargasso Sea. Anyhow, I digress, but suddenly I had to read this book.

First, James visits a man named Ray living on the Delaware River in the Catskills who spends 450 working hours per year (along with friends) building a weir to catch and smoke 1000+ eels every year when they run the river in September. James returns year after year to help him build the weir or haul in and clean eels. He's fascinated to see this man build so much of his life around catching eels.

James finds that the Maori in New Zealand have a very different relationship with their eels. While the eels Ray catches in the Catskills are an obsessive business, New Zealand eels are more like revered but tasty pets. They amass in streams, ponds, and rivers and have been part of the Maori way of life for many generations. I love the image of local women feeding their eels with big steaks and cans of dog food. Among the Maori, there's an interesting idea of some special taniwha eels bringing a warning of bad things to come, and if you see these special eels, bad things happen if you don't pay attention. They have eels there, which are as many as 90 years old. Sometimes their way back to the sea gets blocked off, and they stay where they are getting fatter by the year until they can find a way back to the ocean.

Out beyond Hawaii, on the island in Micronesia, eels are so revered that they are never killed or eaten. They can be found in streams all over the island and are played with by local children. It takes James quite a while to piece together the traditional story about why eels are so sacred there. No story in Pohnpei is told except at night over a glass of a narcotic drink called sakau made from a pepper root. And nobody is willing to tell more than a fraction of any story unless they are near death. But finally, the story comes, and it's worth the wait.

Finishing this book has made me want to pet, eat, and steer clear of eels. It's made me want to travel not necessarily to see eels, but to experience the places where such eel culture is possible: The Catskills, New Zealand, Micronesia ... they're all on my list. And I want to read more by James Prosek. If he can make me want to read about eels, can he make me care about trout as well? Anyhow, this is the first book I've ever sent to my dad. He's not generally a reader, but we had an interesting conversation about eels after I read this book. I remember catching a couple of eels on the river with him as a child. I'm curious if he'll actually read it or not, but I think he'll find it as interesting as I did.

Edit: James made a PBS documentary about eels, but it's far more sterile and less personal than the book: https://youtu.be/xSvrbOjcJhI

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

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To be completely honest, I found myself highly disappointed with this book.

I expected the book to include much more scientific information than it did. Rather than giving the reader a lot of information about eels, this book chronicles the authors journey around the world "studying" eels. There was a decent amount of information in this book about the cultural significance of eels around the globe, but not a lot of information about the eels themselves.

The layout of this book also drove me bonkers. I'm used to nonfiction books have asterisks at the end of a sentence, leading the reader down to the bottom of the page where information is clarified or elaborated upon, but in this book there were constant notes at the bottom. The majority of notes at the bottoms of the pages were lengthy and seemed as if they could have easily been added directly into the story itself, rather than being tacked on at the bottom of the page. I found the constant notes at the bottom of the page to be distracting and annoying during my read.

The authors writing style was fair. I can't say that I found the author to be a really good writer, but I've definitely read worse writing than his. There were some stylistic aspects of his writing that I found disjointing (short sentences tacked on at the end of a paragraph, for instance), but my overall impression was that the authors writing wasn't terrible to read.

On the whole, I found myself rather disenchanted with this book. I had been really interested in learning about eels; yet by the end of this book I felt as if I hadn't hardly learned a thing about them. I definitely wouldn't recommend this book if you're looking to learn something about eels.

[Michael Beblowski · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished in the sense that I found Eels: An Exploration, From New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish to be problematic and immediately abandoned it to the shelves of the public library. A non-fiction book about the natural world should still contain an element of style while being informative, though the introduction by the author was well-written and engaging subsequent chapters relied on anecdote alone. The tone of chapter two "To the Sargasso" which focused on Cobleskill native Ray Turner who traps eels using a weir on the Delaware River that he inherited from the town hermit was condescending and contained several allusions to Deliverance. But, when I encountered ethnocentric comments about the Maori culture in a chapter about eel mythology among the indigenous population of New Zealand I knew I could not wade through the smugness of the well-traveled author. An extended passage where James Prosek defended a British Colonialist anthropologist, Elsdon Best, who wrote scathing things about the Maori because a book Best had written about fishing in New Zealand inspired Prosek to journey there with a buddy, compelled me to cease reading it.

[Rodney Smith]

Surprisingly interesting, this book drew me in and turned me over in ways that reminded me of John McPhee and John Krakauer. Filled with the magical stories and folktales associated with cultures that both venerate and eat the eel, Prosek explores the eels' lifecycle from mysterious open-ocean spawning grounds to inland freshwater territory and back to sea again. We meet a Catskills hermit that spends his days hand-building and repairing a river weir that will harvest thousands of eels in a couple of nights a year, Maori tribes that worship eels as creators of human life and adore them as docile pets, and a Japanese businessman that travels from Coastal Maine to Basque-region France buying eel larvae to be raised for consumption in the Far East, as well as scientists furiously working to understand the eel life-cycle even as eel numbers plummet world-wide.

[chats · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed all the eel facts in this and CAN RELATE to getting super obsessed with eels as you learn more about them. But there were some really cringey lines in this that made me wish for a history of eels / their significance in Maori culture that was not written by a white dude. The example that stands out most vividly was Prosek’s habit of calling his female sources “girls,” including a PhD candidate who was acting as his fixer throughout New Zealand! Cmon man.

[Fishface · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so sorry to see this one end. Much more lyric and phantasmal than THE BOOK OF EELS. Well-written, full of colorful characters, many of whom are Eels.

[Eric Algeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book created an obsession with eels my girlfriend has heard about for years now. Beautiful creatures with a beautiful analysis of the culture surrounding them. I just fucking love eels, man.

[Iamnotwithouttoads · Rating 5 out of 5]

EEEEEEEEELS


fucking amazing book, shockingly good

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I put this book on my to read list based on a review from the Sunday New York Times Book Review. I’m not sure I would have even been aware of the existence of this book otherwise, but given how much I enjoyed The Genius of Birds, The Soul of an Octopus, and Entangled, I thought I should branch out to this fish little considered by me or anyone else. However, the more I read, the more I realized the eel has been on the periphery of my reading for quite a while. Loving histories and historical fiction of medieval and Renaissance Europe, I had repeatedly run into stories of fishmongers and eels as headed to the kitchens and tables of nobles and peasants alike. In my remembrances, I see a still life with an eel in amongst the foods of the time.

Now take me to a Japanese restaurant for Sushi. What is my favorite on the menu? Unagi. I always wondered why this one piece of sushi was always cooked. Now I know why.

I lived in Micronesia from 1968 to 1970, albeit on a very American economy that was quite removed from the native culture, spirituality, and means of sustenance. I’ve been on Pohnpei – but only in transit to another island. I had no idea any islands in Micronesia even had a freshwater ecosystem. Okay, maybe Guam. Prosek took me back to my time as a child living in Oceania. I enjoyed revisiting this part of the world through the stories and spirituality wrapped around the eel. I really missed quite a bit being a child on an American military island, but I wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Having read the Life and Death of the Great Lakes, I am now adding the decimation of the freshwater eel of the St. Lawrence River system to my knowledge. Another species and integral part of the ecosystem that has fallen victim to the short-sightedness and egotistical nature of humans and industry. Why is it that the hunger of humans for seemingly endless resources justifies the exploitation of said resources to the point of extinction?

I have a deep respect for the indigenous cultures around the world that seek to protect their tenuous connection to the earth and their environments despite the pressure to modernize. Can we ever restore the ecological balance and still meet the needs of humanity?

I’ve decided I really like eels now that I know so much more about them. I will not be swimming with them, handling them, or seeking them out. I will still enjoy unagi. I will respect their role in the ecosystem. I will seek to understand their spiritual connection to the indigenous cultures of the Pacific.

I'd love to see Prosek publish this book again with all the European bits he left out. How about a book that includes pictures too? I loved the drawings, but I found myself continuously internet searching for the photos to go with the stories.

[Иван Величков · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прозак има доста книги за риболов, предимно за лов на пъстърва на плескарка и на каменен костур, но тази се различава коренно от останалите му.
В послеслова пише, че е искал да направи книга за различните начини на лов на змиорка и рецепти за приготвянето ѝ по цял свят. Обаче в четвъртата глава, когато отива при маорите в Нова Зеландия, читателят буквално вижда как се променя цялостната концепция на книгата. Резултатът е околосветско приключение, граничещо с етнографско изследване. Е, има и някоя друга рецепта.
Запознайте се с една от най-мистериозните риби на планетата. Родена в солените води на Саргасово море (поне по-голямата част), змиорката се пръска по цял свят, за да се покатери по теченията на реки и да обитава сладководни водоеми. След като порасне, тя отново се връща на до сега неизвестното точно място в Атлантика да хвърли хайвера си и да умре.
Прозак се опитва да обхване всички взаимодействия между човека и змиорката. От риболов по река Саскуана, през университетски изследвания в Япония, китайски търговци, обикалящи цял свят за закупуване на кристални змиорки, до борбата за запазване на сладководната змиорка като вид в САЩ и Канада.
Най-любими ми станаха главите от Нова Зеландия и Помпей (малък остров в Микронезия). При Маорите, които боготворят змиорката, всеки имаше поне по една история с нея. При островитяните, историята на змиорката беше буквално история на целия остров и местното население, която дори успява да прегъне католическата догма на мисионерите.