32 Eels The EconomistDecember 21st 2019
21the Mediterranean. Some have been known to slither over damp
earth to reach inland waters. Many get eaten along the way. For
those who make it, not much happens: once settled, eels are a sed-
entary lot for up to 20 years. Then, in the run-up to autumn, they
dash for the sea. They are never seen again. One can only assume it
is their offspring that later land in the Bay of Biscay.
A seminal paper in 1923 by Johannes Schmidt, a Danish re-
searcher, resolved to find what happened between the time when
mature eels disappear and baby ones arrive. Chasing mature eels
as they dash westward is not practical. Schmidt opted instead to
track the larvae that hatch into glass eels, which can be found drift-
ing eastward in the Atlantic each spring.
Schmidt’s mission was only a partial success. He never found
mating eels. But what he was able to establish was nonetheless
startling. The smallest larvae, and so the most likely spawning
ground for all European eels, were to be found nowhere near their
habitat. Instead, the eels and their offspring could all be traced
back to the Sargasso Sea, a remote bit of the northern Atlantic
Ocean nestled between Bermuda and the West Indies—6,000km
from Europe’s western coast. Eels found in North America also
spawn in the Sargasso (a dozen other anguillid species spawn in
other locations, some of which remain unknown).Eel be damned
Why eels travel such great distances is not clear; how they do it
barely any more so. Scientists suspect a geomagnetic sense guides
their migration, which can take over a year. In their last months
flitting about in Europe’s rivers and streams, the eels’ gut dissolves
into fat to store energy for the voyage. Their eyes enlarge to adapt to
the gloom of the ocean floor. Their colour changes from yellow to
dark silver, better to bypass predators as they embark on their jour-
ney to sex and death.
Not, though, if Hans Inge Olofsson has his way. On a late sum-
mer day in 2019, 114 eels that had hoped to start their exodus to Sar-
gasso ended up in the bottom of Mr Olofsson’s boat instead.
Tousle-haired with a raspy voice and a pouch of snustobacco
permanently lodged under his upper lip, Hånsa, as his friends call
him, makes no effort to deviate from the affable Swedish fisher-
man of central casting. This year marked his 33rd season on the wa-
ters of the Ålakusten(eel coast), a 30km stretch at the southern tip
of Sweden’s Baltic shoreline. By his reckoning, 114 eels in three
traps is a good catch these days.
There are many ways to catch an eel. The fleet-of-
hand and sure-of-grip can snatch them out of the wa-
ter. Others dangle hooks in rivers. Commercial fisher-
ies like Hånsa’s use time-tested traps. One visit every
couple of days is enough. A three-man crew is needed:
Hånsa, a sprightly 68-year-old, the undoubted captain;
his grandson Carl, in his 20s, who helps out as deck-
hand; and Stefan, a friend whose heft suggests a side-
line as an oligarch’s bodyguard, steering the boat.
Waist-high waders protect the trio not from water
but from fish. Eels can survive out of water for long pe-
riods, and once the nets are emptied, the eels are like a
moving rug absorbing whatever they come across. A
few try to hide in the boat’s hidden crannies. One man-
ages to jump back into the sea—113 eels will have to do.
Historians trace organised eel fishing in southern
Sweden back to the early 16th century. Hånsa’s grandfa-
ther first started plying the waters in 1923, the year Jo-
hannes Schmidt tracked the larvae to the Sargasso. His
father took over in 1959, then Hånsa in 1987.
About 100 crews once fished for eel off the Ålakus-
ten. No longer. “There are only six or seven of us left
nowadays,” says Hånsa. Eel fishing has become an old
man’s game (even in egalitarian Sweden, women arerare in fishing). Some 70% of the fishermen are over 55;
Hånsa is well beyond the legal retirement age of 61.
The ageing of the Swedish eel gang ties back to the
mysterious nature of their prey. Starting in 1980, the
numbers of glass eels arriving on Europe’s shores start-
ed falling precipitously. For 30 years, their number fell
by 15% a year; by 2010 annual arrivals from Sargasso to
all Europe’s rivers and creeks had collapsed to just 1%
of historical levels.
Overfishing is an unlikely culprit: catches of grown
eels were fairly stable before and after the drop started.
In Europe, eel is now rarely eaten. But humans harm
eels in other ways. The turbines of hydroelectric power
plants slice up migrating eels into something for
which only Larousse Gastronomique might have a use.
Pollution has caused a loss of habitats. Climate change
has probably swayed currents to transport eel larvae
away from where they can thrive.
Whatever the cause, the European eel was deemed
“critically endangered” by the iucn, a conservation
group, in 2008. It now sits with the Beluga sturgeon
and black rhinoceros on its “red list”, just one step
above “extinct in the wild”. In 2007 the countries of the
European Union committed to ensuring the migration
to Sargasso of at least 40% of the number of eels that
would escape in the absence of all humans, roughly
double the current figure. Ireland and Scotland banned
eel fishing entirely.
In 2007 Sweden also banned the capture of eels. But
the authorities made derogations for the likes of
Hånsa, who could prove they had derived a living from
eel fishing before the new rules came into force—liter-
ally a case of being grandfathered in. Across Sweden, a
caste of about 140 old-timers is what remains of what
used to be a proud industry.
The march of time means Ålakustencrews are being
whittled away naturally: a heart attack here, a stroke
there. Hånsa had a health scare last year. The rules
are clear that he who holds the fishing licence must be
in the boat when the traps are emptied. Grandfather
and grandson jokingly wonder if a corpse in a coffin