Ellen Ruppel Shell is the author of the new book Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, with Eels. Her other books include Cheap. She is Professor Emeritus of science journalism at Boston University.
Q: What inspired you to write Slippery Beast, and how was the book’s title chosen?
A: There was a film called Sexy Beast, a terrific crime drama that starred Ben Kingsley. It’s not a genre I usually enjoy, but it was terrific, so “Sexy Beast” stuck in my mind. It doesn’t apply to an eel, but “slippery” does, so I appropriated that. It’s one of the themes of the book—a slippery, evasive creature.
What inspired me was a couple of incidents that happened in Maine, where I live half the year. I wrote about Sam, not his real name, who was our handyman. He was not a very enthusiastic handyman.
We were chatting—he was great at storytelling, less great at home repairs. He wanted to earn money for a boat, and teach his grandson to fish. I said, why not get a commercial fishing license? He said, I did, but it didn’t work out because of the eels. I said, What? And he said, Baby eels are selling for $3,000 a pound. People carry guns, and I’m too scared to fish.
It’s probably apocryphal, but it stuck in my mind. I’d been writing on economics and social justice. I started looking into the eels, the crime, what it meant to Maine—I couldn’t resist.
Q: The Nature Conservancy said of the book, “It’s part natural history, part true crime, and buckets of slippery, slimy fun. You won’t be able to put it down.” What do you think of that description, and how did you balance the various facets of the story?
A: I write novelistically. The book unfolds organically. I deal with a question or a problem or an issue that often leads me to the next one. I’ve taught narrative nonfiction for 30 years, and the students want to know my tricks. Many writers use outlines, but I don’t—an old dog isn’t going to learn new tricks!
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I did a lot of traveling. It’s an international market for eels but it began and ended in Maine, which is a wonderful place to be—it’s evocative, remote, underpopulated, a bit mysterious, like the eel.
Native Americans relied on eels for centuries. I visited a reservation and learned a lot about the importance of the animal to Native Americans. I also visited other places in the U.S.
I went to Bermuda—I followed a research crew trying to track down the breeding ground of the eels. I went to Norway to speak with a scientist about how eels navigate thousands of miles of migration.
I went to Paris to visit the Restaurant Eels. The chef/owner told me there’s only one eel dish because it’s very expensive, but it’s called Restaurant Eels because he had fished them and wanted to improve on his grandmother’s cooking.
I went to Japan—the Japanese eel is different. They have found the breeding ground of the Japanese eel. Japan is the number-one consumer of eel.
One surprise was that the natural history of eels parallels the natural history of science. Aristotle was concerned with the eel and believed it spontaneously generated. There was a scientific theory that certain animals come from nothing—they spring unbidden from the mud. And while the eel is ubiquitous, no one had ever seen an eel breed or seen an eel egg.
The theory continued for centuries, and bolstered the spontaneous generation theory. It bled into the 19th century. As we’ve evolved away from that theory, it paralleled Darwin and Freud.
The first scientific paper Freud published was on the sexuality of the eel. His advisor told him he needed to get to the bottom of the question of whether eels are hermaphrodites. Freud went to the lab and disemboweled hundreds of eels. He found they were not hermaphrodites. His advisor was unhappy with the finding, and Freud fled the eel issue and went to humans.
Through history, scientists were interested in eels. Today’s scientists labor
in obscurity but are obsessed.
Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about the eel?
A: I thought eels were very scary. I’m not a big naturalist. I love the outdoors, but not bugs or snakes, and eels were like snakes to me. But they’re not—they’re nocturnal, they don’t bite humans, they’re pretty peaceful in terms of humans.
You can swim among eels—one scientist, Caroline Durif, goes swimming with eels. She almost compares them to puppies.
I didn’t realize how important they are. They’re central to a lot of ecosystems. I didn’t realize how common they were. Fifty percent of the fish biomass in the St. Lawrence River were eels. They’re a very important food, and very important for the balance of ecosystems.
Very old animal ecosystems evolved with eels, and you can really mess up an ecosystem by hunting them or chopping them up with turbines. They’re pretty essential animals.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m looking at another endangered species but not an animal. It’s another great story.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: We haven’t talked about the crime in the book—I want to remind people that the illegal dealing of eels is the world’s largest wildlife crime. We think of elephant tusks, but baby eels are the most lucrative wildlife crime—over $4 billion a year and getting worse.
In Europe they worked hard to make the European eel an endangered species, and
that has helped. The Japanese eel has strict controls. In the U.S., the
American eel is in decline and is very threatened. The illegal trade is having
a big effect. People need to be aware of this.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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