Ellen Ruppel Shell (Courtesy photo)
The Bristol Community Read Program kicks off with “Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History of Eels.” (Courtesy photo)
While lobsters comprise Maine’s largest and best-known fishery, baby eels are pound for pound its most valuable. Found in lakes, ponds and rivers throughout the state, the eel remains today one of the world’s most mysterious creatures; an object of fascination, controversy, speculation, and worship whose secrets challenged history’s finest minds from Aristotle to Freud.
That’s why “Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History of Eels” is the inaugural selection of the Bristol Community Read Program. It’s a fascinating account of a deeply enigmatic creature. Old Bristol Historical Society, the Bristol Area Library, South Bristol’s Rutherford Library and the South Bristol Historical Society are sponsoring this event which will culminate with an in-person discussion with the book’s author, journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell, on Saturday, May 23.
Describing her book, Shell writes, “What is it about eels? Depending on who you ask they are a pest, a fascination, a threat, an obsession, or—more to our point–a pot of gold. Whether smoked, jellied, or served up along a sushi platter, eels are both delicious and increasingly rare: so much so that a pound of tiny, translucent, infant eels can command $3000 or more on the black market, making eels the most valuable illegally trafficked animal on the planet. As a result, this once highly abundant freshwater fish is today in radical decline.”
Shell traces the elusive eel from the coast of Maine to the Sargasso Sea and back whether in riversides, laboratories, restaurants, courtrooms or sacred tribal lands. Along the way, she delves deep into the world of “eel people;” the scientists, fishers, poachers, hobbyists, advocates, investors and others whose lives turn on the future of this fascinating and mysterious creature that has so far declined to reveal its most fundamental secrets.
The Bristol Area Library and South Bristol’s Rutherford Library have stocked copies of the book to lend. Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta has ordered extra copies for sale.
Shell, professor emerita of science writing at Boston University and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic, contributes to scores of publications, including The New York Times, The Smithsonian, Science, The Boston Globe, and Scientific American. She is the author of five books, including “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.” An avid (if middling) skier, swimmer, biker and kayaker, she splits her time between the Midcoast and Somerville, Mass.
At 4 p.m. on May 23, the community is invited to discuss the book with the author at the historic mill at Pemaquid Falls, 2089 Bristol Road in Pemaquid.
