The Book of Eels, Patrik Svensson [bill gates best books .TXT] 📗

consortium called the Ring, which consisted of a handful of wealthy eel merchants in London. The Ring still controlled all eel fishing in Lough Neagh when a group of Catholic fishermen banded together in 1965, forming the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Cooperative Society. Together, the cooperative was able to raise the money to buy 20 percent of the lake’s fishing rights. In the years that followed, more money was set aside and the remaining 80 percent was purchased as well. That this happened at the same time the Troubles broke out was, of course, no coincidence. The members of the Ring testified to being forced to sell their shares under threat of violence; they also testified that the consortium’s ships had been attacked. It was said the eel fishermen were, to a man, members of the Irish Republican Army.

And thus, the eel became embroiled in the violent Northern Irish conflict, which has always had as much to do with class, power, ownership, wealth, and poverty as it has with religion. Today, fishing on Lough Neagh is 100 percent controlled by the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Cooperative Society, and those who still fish for eel are not about to forget where they came from. Stubborn pride drives them to keep baiting their hooks and setting their spillers. Because that’s what’s always been done and how it should be.

AND NOW ALL THIS WILL DISAPPEAR. THE CULTURAL HERITAGE AND the traditions. The regional dishes and landmarks. The eel sheds, boats, and fishing tools. The knowledge that has been passed down the generations. And eventually, the memory itself of all those things.

At least that’s the fear, on the shores of Lough Neagh and in Basque Aguinaga, and on the Swedish eel coast. Because as the eel population shrinks, the calls to protect grow stronger. Fishing for glass eels is already banned in many parts of the continent. Scientists and politicians are working toward a complete ban across Europe.

So be it, the fishermen say, but remember that you’re not just robbing us of our livelihoods. Traditions, knowledge, and a valuable, old cultural heritage will also inevitably be lost. More than that, they claim, humanity’s relationship with the eel is at stake. If people can no longer fish for eel—catch it, kill it, and eat it—they will lose interest in it. And if people have no interest in the eel, it’s lost anyway.

That’s why the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Cooperative Society is now working as hard to save the eel as to catch it. Among other things, it runs an extensive and costly project to buy and release glass eels into the lake. The eel fishermen on the Swedish eel coast have organized and are working to increase awareness of the plight of the eel as well. They have founded something called the Eel Foundation, which, much like the fishermen at the Lough Neagh society, works to release eels in order to bolster stocks. In 2012, the Cultural Heritage Association of the Eel Coast was established, with the aim of getting eel fishing and its traditions in Sweden declared an intangible cultural heritage. On its website, the association writes: “A total ban on eel fishing means a living culture, a local craft, and a unique culinary heritage becomes history. The eel sheds along the coast will be turned into summer homes for the wealthy. The stories will fall silent. The interest in the eel, and thus the eel itself, will be lost.”

This is the great paradox, which has also become part of the eel question of our time: in order to understand the eel, we have to have an interest in it, and to have an interest in it, we have to continue to hunt, kill, and eat it (at least according to some of the people who, after all, are closer than most to the eel). An eel is never allowed to simply be an eel. It’s never allowed to just be. Thus, it has also become a symbol of our complex relationship with all the other forms of life on this planet.

10Outwitting the Eel

One summer, we tried to klumma. It’s an old fishing method used in streams in rural Skåne, in southern Sweden. By all accounts, it’s an activity that belongs to a different world, since the method itself is so insane it’s hard to imagine how anyone would be capable of inventing it today. But somewhere, at some point, someone did, and also discovered, against all odds, that it not only worked but was highly effective. Somehow, this knowledge then spread, in patterns that are both undiscernible and inexplicable, to finally arrive at my dad, who in turn passed it on to me, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Which it is not. When you klumma for eel, you thread a needle with a long piece of extra-strong sewing thread and hold it in one hand while you hold a worm in the other. You stick the needle through the worm, pull the thread all the way through and repeat until you have several feet of worms, which you roll into a quivering, stinking ball of slime and secretions and writhing bodies. You then attach a sinker and a line to the ball, but no hook.

You fish at night, preferably from a boat. The ball of worms is thrown into the water and left to settle on the bottom, while you hold the taut line gently. When the eel finds the ball and bites into it, you respond with an immediate tug. If you’re skilled enough, and since the eel’s tiny but slightly curved teeth make it cling to the thread in a slightly hangdog way, you can pull the eel into your boat in one quick, smooth motion. At least in theory.

Dad had never tried it before. He hadn’t even seen anyone do it. But we both realized it would take, first and foremost, a very large number of worms. Dad had an idea about how to find them.