Slippery Beast

A fascinating account of a deeply mysterious creature—the eel—mixing true crime, natural history, travel, and big business.

Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Slippery Beast is a captivating exploration of the enigmatic eel—a thrilling saga that weaves together elements of true crime, natural history, travel, and big business. What is it about eels? Depending on who you ask, they are a pest, a fascination, a threat, or a pot of gold. What they are not is predictable.

Eels emerged some 200 million years ago, surviving mass extinctions and continental shifts, and were once among the world’s most abundant freshwater fish. However, since the 1970s, their numbers have plummeted. This decline is partly due to their popularity as unagi, a delicacy.

In Slippery Beast, journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell delves into the world of “eel people,” driven by her burgeoning interest in this mysterious and highly sought-after creature. Despite extensive study by celebrated thinkers from Aristotle to Leeuwenhoek, and even a young Sigmund Freud, much about eels remains unknown, including how eels reproduce. They cannot be bred reliably in captivity, making the infant eels, or "elvers," incredibly valuable. A pound of these tiny, translucent, bug-eyed creatures, caught in Maine's cold fresh waters, can fetch $3,000 or more on the black market.

The illegal trade in eels is an international scandal, with billions of dollars involved each year. In Maine, federal investigators have risked their lives to dismantle poaching rings, including the notorious "Operation Broken Glass." Ruppel Shell follows the elusive eel from Maine to the Sargasso Sea and back, exploring riversides, fishing holes, laboratories, restaurants, courtrooms, and America’s first commercial eel “family farm,” which could revolutionise the international market and save a state.

This enthralling, globe-spanning narrative offers a compelling look at an animal that you may never come to love, but which will always astonish you. It is a miraculous creature that reveals more about us than we can ever know about it.