The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
Patrik Svensson
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The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
Patrik Svensson
Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery. Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson writes a book about this unusual animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Blending memoir and nature writing, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death.
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0 0I was very excited to read this book after watching a Tiktok (of all things) that mentioned that the lifecycle, origin, and reproduction of eels is very mysterious and still not wholly understood by science.
The first chapter introduced me to so much research about the eel, and many interesting facts - but each other chapter following had really graphic scenes about how to hunt an eel, flay it, etc. One really horrific scene described nailing the fish through the head and letting it writhe about for hours, nerves exposed. These scenes really through me off (I understand that any meat production is very graphic - but wasn't aware I was signing up for this).
Additionally, every other chapter became memoirs to time the author spent bonding with his dad around fishing the eel and preparing it as food. I ended up skipping these chapters to return to the science and research efforts of the eel, because I didn't want to read a memoir, I wanted to learn about eels - and as terrible as it sounds, I was very bored by these chapters.
I learned a great lot about eels in this book - so it accomplished what it set out to do. I really enjoyed the chapters that discussed the cultural and historical significance of the eel, including its presence in major world religions, the mythical first thanksgiving, and how communities were set up for eel fishing (my family's hometown in the Netherlands is translated to Eel Lake).
I learned that the threat of overfishing eels has led them to become critically endangered, and with that comes the destruction of cultural practices surrounding the eel - but its complex because the cultural practices (fishing) is the very thing that threatens eels the most.
All said, I learned a lot and would recommend readers to pick up this book about a topic they probably never considered, and learn about this mysterious, metamorphic fish.
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