Book Review: The Mysteries of Eels

The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination With the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

Svensson, Patrik (2019: ECCO, 241pp.)     

This is a unique book by an author who mingles eel science with his own story of growing up in Sweden hunting them with his father as he relates humanity's attempts to understand these mysterious fishes. 

 

He begins on the science side with Aristotle, who described eels accurately but could not figure out their reproductive process: he finally, perhaps in desperation, wrote they were born from the mud. As we follow the very slow unraveling of the eel secrets by human scientists, we learn that among other things Sigmund Freud spent a year dissecting eels. 

The hero of the story is Danish marine biologist Johanne Schmidt, who went all over the Atlantic Ocean catching thousands of eels as he strove to understand where they were born and where they died. We think today that the answers are most likely lie in the region known as the Sargasso Sea. However, eels keep a shroud of mystery wrapped around them: while our tracking of their movements as larvae and as adults shows they swim to and from the Sargasso Sea, no one has caught an eel of any age there. 

He writes, “a scientifically minded optimist would say it's just a matter of time.” He also notes, however, that the time may run out. Eels are overfished, and decades of effort by Japanese experts to farm them have proven a costly and frustrating failure. 

Svensson's philosophical observations can go a bit far afield, such when he quotes scripture about faith in Jesus having something to do with the belief in the mystery and importance of eels. He does not attempt to explore all the species of eels, focusing mainly on those in the Atlantic and is not address some interesting issues like how big they get. This is as much a captivating personal journey as it is a study of the eel's hidden wanderings.

 Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

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