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

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

Author:Patrik Svensson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2020-05-14T23:00:00+00:00


13

Under the Sea

Despite the contradictory feeling the eel arouses, up close, in its natural habitat, it gives the impression of being fairly jovial. It rarely puts on airs. It doesn’t cause a scene. It eats what its surroundings offer. It stays on the sidelines, demanding neither attention nor appreciation.

The eel is different from, for instance, the salmon, which sparkles and shimmers and makes wild dashes and daring jumps. The salmon comes off as a self-absorbed, vain fish. The eel seems more content. It doesn’t make a big deal of its existence.

And thus the eel is in a more fundamental way the opposite of the salmon. Both are migrating fish, both live in both fresh and saltwater and both undergo metamorphoses, but their life cycles differ in their most essential aspect.

The salmon is a so-called anadromous fish. It breeds in freshwater and its offspring swim out to sea after about a year, spending most of their lives there. After just a few years (the salmon clearly doesn’t possess the patience of the eel), the sexually mature salmon swims back up into fresh water and procreates.

The eel, for its part, makes a similar journey, but in the opposite direction. It is a so-called catadromous fish that lives its life in freshwater but breeds in saltwater.

Another, more subtle, indefinable detail also sets them apart. When the salmon wanders back up rivers and waterways, it always returns to the spot where its parents reproduced. Every salmon quite literally walks in its ancestors’ footsteps. Somehow, it knows that’s where it has to go. A salmon can live a free and unrestrained life in the sea, but eventually it will return to the place of its birth and join the community it was destined for. This means there are clear genetic differences among salmon populations from different waters. The salmon is, so to speak, biologically tied to its origin. It doesn’t allow existential transgressions.

The eel, of course, also finds its way back to its birthplace—Sargasso, ho!—but once it reaches this vast sea, it encounters eels from all across Europe and breeds indiscriminately. Origin to an eel is not about family or biological belonging, it’s simply a location. And afterward, when the tiny willow leaf drifts toward the coasts of Europe and turns into a glass eel, it chooses a waterway to wander up seemingly at random. Where it spends its adult life apparently has nothing to do with previous generations of eels; why a particular eel chooses a particular river remains a mystery. This means the genetic variation among eels in different parts of Europe is negligible. Every eel seeks its place in the world without a guide, without inheritance or heritage and existentially alone.

Perhaps the eel’s fate is easier to identify with than the salmon’s predestined lack of independence. And perhaps that’s why the eel, with its enigmatic remoteness, remains such a fascinating creature. Because it’s easier to relate to someone who has secrets, too, people who aren’t immediately obvious about who they are or where they’re from.



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