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Surprised Eel Historian, PhD

@greenleejw

Apr 12 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

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Did you know that the US government once tried to transplant east coast eels to California? Weird but true!

It's a fun story. Train loads of eels! Crashes! Loss! Pyrrhic victory!

So. Settle in, friends, for a thread about some well-trained eels. 1/8

Freshwater eels aren't native to the US Pacific Coast. All the eels in N. America come from the Sargasso Sea, & swim in waters that empty into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico.

There are lots of lampreys on the W. coast. But no native eels.

But they wanted some. Like you do. 2/8

So in 1873 the famous fisheries expert Livingston Stone, working for the US Fisheries Commission & the CA Fisheries Commission, got to work.

He got 1,500 eels from Martha Vineyard, & 40,000 eels from the Hudson River, put them in an "aquarium car" on a train, & headed west. 3/8

The train got to Omaha in good shape, but somewhere out on the Great Plains tragedy struck. The train crashed, and all the fish were lost.

This put Stone back to square one, though apparently it improved fishing in Nebraska. 4/8

Undeterred, Stoned tried again the next year. This time he got 2,000 eels from the Hudson, & 1,500 small eels from NY Harbor.

The harbor eels all made it, & were introduced to San Francisco Bay.

Only 12 of the Hudson eels survived, and they went into the Sacramento River. 5/8

In 1879 Stone was back at it, shipping west 3,000 NY eels & 500 eels from New Jersey.

The NY eels were thrown out en route, as they didn't look like they'd make it. But all 500 NJ eels made the trip, & were released into the Sacramento River & Alameda Creek. 6/8

And finally, in 1882, J.G. Woodbury of the CA Fisheries Commission brought west 10 large eels. They all made it.

And that was the end of it. Californians caught eels off and on for a while, but the numbers fell off, & the effort was eventually deemed an inexplicable failure. 7/8

What they didn't know was that the eels needed to return to the Sargasso to breed, which wasn't going to happen from CA. And even if some intrepid eel had made the trip, the elvers wouldn't return to the Sacramento area.

Sometimes the eels win, folks.

As it should be. /fin

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More from @greenleejw

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD

@greenleejw

May 4, 2023

Do you have a broken down old horse you want to sell? Need to make it seem young again?

Then, friend, you need an eel! In medieval & early modern England, horse sellers practiced feaguing: inserting a live eel into the horse's rectum to get the animal to act more lively. 1/5

John Miton wrote about this in school, in 1628, saying that several of his skinny classmates would be good as horse suppositories. He said they'd make "scraggly horses...livelier and quicker than if they had ten live eels in their bellies.”

Classic stuff, Milton. 2/5

In later times eels went out of style, and horse sellers began to use ginger, instead. We still have the phrase "to ginger up" as a part of our popular lexicon.

This comes up a couple of times in Terry Pratchett's books (among other places).

But before ginger, it was eels. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD

@greenleejw

Apr 13, 2023

Congrats! You're the King of England! And you love you some eels.

But...there's a problem. But it's the 1660s, & you've banned the import of foreign eels & you can't get enough English eels to satisfy you. So what do you do?

If you're Charles II of England...you cheat! 1/5

Charles & Parliament had banned foreign (mostly Dutch) eels in 1666. But there weren't any English eel merchants in London. If Charles wanted eels, they'd have to come from Holland!

The king was hungry.

So he ordered his fish purchaser, Walter Underhill, to make it happen. 2/5

At first Underhill bought cargo from captured Dutch ships. But this wasn't good enough. The crown needed more!

So in 1669 Charles ordered Underhill to go to Holland & "import eels for the supply of his Majesty’s Household."

All while average Londoners had to go without. 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD

@greenleejw

Apr 12, 2023

In 1200 CE, people in England paid 540,000+ eels in rent each year. That's a lot, right? RIGHT?

Yes. But.

Those were *just* the eels for rent. People were catching & eating LOTS more. In 1290, fishermen in the village of Ramsey caught 365,000 eels, above & beyond rent eels. 1/4

"Wait...what?!" you say. "No way."

Yes, way.

The 1290 lay subsidy roll recorded that 9 fishermen in Ramsey caught 115k eels, while the surrounding region was recorded as hauling in an additional 250k.

So...365,000 eels being caught each year in one small town. *At least.* 2/4

Lay subsidy rolls frequently *undervalued* property, & mostly captured surplus materials bound for regional and interregional trade.

So 365k eels is probably an undercount, & only captured those eels destined for markets in London, Lincoln, etc.

So. Many. Eels. 3/4

Read 4 tweets

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD

@greenleejw

Apr 4, 2023

I had questions yesterday about eel smuggling. Questions like: "WFT?" & "Why? & "How?" So let's take a look.

Eel smuggling is maybe the biggest wildlife crime going. It's a c. 4 billion a year black market industry. Interpol has called it "Europe's ivory trade." 1/7

Eel is a popular food in Asia. But eels are endangered, & the demand can't be met locally anymore.

There's a legal trade from the US & other places. But that's not enough. The most ready source of eels is Europe, but since 2010 it's been illegal to export eels from the EU. 2/7

About one billion baby eels, called glass eels, come ashore in Europe each year. And between 1/4 & 1/3 of them are fished illegally, and smuggled to China.

How?

Well...often in bags, in suitcases. You can get 10s of thousands in a suitcase, & they sell for €1 per eel. 3/7

Read 7 tweets

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD

@greenleejw

Mar 14, 2023

It's #piDay2023...so let's talk about eel pie!

Eel pie has been an important English food for a long time. Medieval cookbooks often included eel pie recipes, & everyone from peasants to kings at them.

In 1256, Henry III demanded eel pies from his bailiff at Fetcham! 1/8

Eel pie was so common that not knowing how to cook one was recognized sign of stupidity. In King Lear, there's a cook who was so far gone that she tried to eels in the pie w/o killing them first.

It doesn't mean much to us, but Shakespeare's audience knew better.

Hilarious! 2/8

Over time, eel pie became associated w/ London. Pie & mash shops were common, esp. in the East End, & there were several hundred in 19th century.

There aren't many left now, & E. End eel pies are kinda a tourist food. But you can still find an eel pie if you really need one. 3/8