The gaps in our knowledge about eels are fertile places for art and ideas to grow, writes Peter Rogers, as he releases a new eel-inspired EP.
Aristotle believed they emerged from mud through a kind of spontaneous magic. Pliny the Elder thought they rubbed against rocks and their dead skin came to life. Others were adamant they were the progeny of snakes that mated with fish on the banks of rivers. Sigmund Freud dissected them and they were once used as tender to pay rent. The history of the European eel is one of mystery, folklore and conflict, and because we still don’t fully understand their incredible story, the gaps in our knowledge provide the ideal conditions for creativity to flourish.
I’ve always loved mysteries. Like many kids who grew up in the 1980s I was obsessed with The Usborne Book Of The Unexplained and its illustrations of ghosts, monsters and UFOs. I would stare out of my bedroom window in Luton and try to imagine those strange and scary things out there in the real world, just beyond the back fence or above the clouds. Even now, as a 46-year-old my shelves are filled with books about remote islands, reclusive hermits living off-grid, North Korea. It’s never really gone away.
Late last year I was searching for the jumping-off point for a new music project, but was feeling very uninspired. I’m also a keen audiobook listener and one day my algorithm suggested something I might be interested in: The Book Of Eels by Tom Fort. It quickly became clear that the strange story of Anguilla anguilla was right up my street, and thoughts of a musical project quickly began to take shape.
In 2020 I produced the podcast The Stubborn Light Of Things with author and nature writer Melissa Harrison. One of my favourite episodes of the series was called ‘Knowing’, in which she went on the search for a cuckoo in her local area. She described the intense and borderline violent arguments between 19th century naturalists at The Royal Society over how exactly the cuckoo was able to deposit its eggs in a host’s nest so quickly. At the time nobody knew the answer and opposing groups had to be separated, such was the fierce desire for someone to be right and be the first to conclusively know.
A similar battle for knowledge has followed the European eel through our history. For thousands of years we knew almost nothing due to its unique, scarcely believable migration pattern and the way it changes shape and form over its lifetime.
In 1904, the Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt set out to prove that it started life in the Atlantic Ocean rather than in the Mediterranean Sea, which at the time was the position staunchly held by celebrated Italian physician, zoologist and Darwin medal winner Giovanni Battista Grassi. Grassi – probably through a combination of hubris and nationalism – was adamant that the eels loved and voraciously consumed throughout Italy came from their own pristine waters, and so began a kind of eels arms race, each biologist desperate to prove their thesis – or perhaps more importantly disprove their rivals. By the 1950s, Schmidt’s theory had won out, and little by little, more of the story was revealed.
Here’s what we know now: the eel begins its life thousands of feet down in the Sargasso Sea. In the beginning the larvae is tiny and has a body resembling a small leaf. Swept up by the gulf stream, it begins to drift gradually towards Europe on a journey that can take up to three years, becoming a translucent glass eel on the way. Entering our waterways it changes form twice again, from a darkly pigmented elver into the larger, stronger yellow eel. This stage in its life is by far the longest. It can spend up to fifty secretive, solitary years in the murky depths of our rivers and estuaries, hunting at night, sometimes lying motionless for long periods. Because of this behaviour they are rarely seen, and due to their falling numbers, hard to catch, as this wonderful video of East Anglian eel man Peter Carter shows.
Finally – we don’t know how – it makes the decision to reproduce. It will metamorphose one final time, turning silver and black, then make its way back across the Atlantic, travelling with, as the Swedish journalist and eel enthusiast Patrik Svensson describes, ‘an existential resolve that cannot be explained’. It will reproduce somewhere deep in the darkness and die. The life cycle of the European eel is complete.
After listening to Tom Fort’s book and reading more pieces online the EP came together very quickly, the incredible story providing a ready-made structure: five tracks covering the five stages of the eel’s life cycle. However, the pieces of music I created aren’t literal descriptions of each stage of an eel’s life in musical form. They simply became starting points. They suggested potential moods, colours and textures to experiment with. They hinted at the lengths of each piece. And throughout I attempted to keep a sense of wonder and mystery about their lives close to me.
European eels have, up to the present day, never been observed mating in the wild and how they navigate from the Sargasso Sea to our waters and back is still not fully understood. At some stage their remaining secrets may be discovered and put on record, and one of the longest unfinished stories in modern zoology will be neatly tied up, with all other possibilities disappearing down into the depths.
Part of me hopes that won’t happen. I know there is something inexorable in our desire to learn, to know, to catalogue. And in a world where information is so readily available, ‘knowing’ something is only ever a couple of clicks away. But those gaps in our knowledge can be incredibly fertile places for art and ideas. Curiosity is such an essential prerequisite for a creative life, especially curiosity with no end point, no desire for objectivity or fact. Art is not about answers. It’s always a conversation.
Stories like that of the eel carry an irresistible allure. They embody something important about the world for me: a reminder that despite the point we find ourselves at in 2025 there are still things we may not ever know. There are unfinished chapters out there that can help our imaginations swim and drift with the current. And we don’t always have to know the answer.
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‘On The Life Cycle Of The European Eel’ is available now on Bandcamp.
Follow Peter Rogers on Threads here.