Thursday
Yesterday I just happened to stumble across an article on eel smuggling, which apparently is big business in parts of the world. For the second time this week, I was put in mind of a Narnia novel. I suspect all Narnia lovers will instantly know which one.
First, here’s the story as it appeared in The Guardian:
Spanish police have arrested 29 people after seizing 180kg of critically endangered young European eels with a value on the hidden market of €270,000 (£237,000).
The Guardia Civil said the operation, in collaboration with Europol, had also led to 20 arrests elsewhere in Europe.
The elvers, or glass eels – prized as a delicacy in Spain and parts of east Asia – were found after officers carried out almost 3,000 checks and inspections in ports, airports and other transport hubs.
A Wikipedia essay puts the crime in a larger context:
Freshwater eel poaching and smuggling have emerged in recent years as a direct response to the sustained popularity of eels as food, combined with the eels’ low population, endangered status, and subsequent protections….The life cycle for eels has not been closed in captivity on a sustainable level, and any eel farms rely entirely on wild-caught elvers (juvenile eels). These elvers are caught from their native ranges in North America and Europe and are smuggled into East Asian eel farms, where they are often relabeled as the native Japanese eel to subvert legislation.
Growing up, the only reason I knew that people even ate eels was because of a scene in The Silver Chair. The children need a guide for their quest to save Prince Rillian and get a Marsh-wiggle, which is a more-or-less human figure but sporting webbed feet and hands. Puddleglum is (as his name suggests) perpetually gloomy and pessimistic, which we see from the first when he announces his intention to catch some eels:
“I’m trying to catch a few eels to make an eel stew for our dinner,” said Puddleglum. “Though I shouldn’t wonder if I didn’t get any. And you won’t like them much if I do.”
As it turns out, he catches several eels. Also contrary to his prediction, the children enjoy the fare:
When the meal came it was delicious and the children had two large helpings each. At first the Marsh-wiggle wouldn’t believe that they really liked it, and when they had eaten so much that he had to believe them, he fell back on saying that it would probably disagree with them horribly. “What’s food for wiggles may be poison for humans, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said.
I missed the part about the eels being delicious when I was growing up. It’s as though I took Puddleglum at his word and then applied a chain of associations—marshes, Marshwiggles, and the smoke from Puddleglum’s pipe—to arrive at the conclusion that eels are nasty. It so happens that Puddleglum’s pipe smoke, which does some wriggling of its own, is nasty:
In spite of his expectation of catching no eels, he had a dozen or so, which he had already skinned and cleaned. He put a big pot on, mended the fire, and lit his pipe. Marsh-wiggles smoke a very strange, heavy sort of tobacco (some people say they mix it with mud) and the children noticed the smoke from Puddleglum’s pipe hardly rose in the air at all. It trickled out of the bowl and downwards and drifted along the ground like a mist. It was very black and set Scrubb coughing.
“Now,” said Puddleglum. “Those eels will take a mortal long time to cook, and either of you might faint with hunger before they’re done. I knew a little girl—but I’d better not tell you that story. It might lower your spirits, and that’s a thing I never do. So, to keep your minds off your hunger, we may as well talk about our plans.”
I’ve learned much more about eels since that first fictional encounter. They are extraordinary creatures, especially in the way that they migrate over 3000 miles–all the way across the Atlantic Ocean–to spawn off the North American coast in the Sargasso Sea. There’s nothing glum about them at all.
