Eels Alive!

6:36Chuck Bryant:And, yes, they make a beeping sound when they do.

6:40Josh Clark:Oh, man. That's amazing. I mean, they got to let everyone know. It's like, I can't see where I'm going, everyone. Eel coming through.

6:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Also, I just want to take a second for a PSA. if you drive a truck that makes a beeping sound when it backs up, never, ever just sit there idling with your gear in reverse. Oh, God. Do people do that? You're not allowed to do that. Yes. You mean I used to live next to a nursing home, I guess, and we lived on the side of their delivery area. And dudes would just do that, just sit there with their truck in reverse, not moving.

7:21Josh Clark:At like six in the morning, I should say.

7:24Chuck Bryant:No.

7:24Josh Clark:All right. I agree. Eels have that smooth, slippery skin, and it is coated in a slime. It's a protective slime. It helps them with their swimming. It makes them very streamlined. And it also helps regulate how much water is in their bodies, which is pretty unusual. And they're predatory. Like, they're eating other fish, basically, while they're down there. Yeah.

7:46Chuck Bryant:What does something else that's very neat about eels is that they don't like, they're not born little baby eels and then they grow up into big 12 foot long 250 pound eels they actually go through stages of metamorphosis like a butterfly does yeah they don't look anything like an eel when they're born and as they grow they actually change shape and color in addition to size they also very frequently will move from like the ocean to freshwater creeks far inland Like there's a lot of great stuff that eels do that we just had overlooked for a very long time.

8:24Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, there's some fun, really fun stuff coming. They're basically solitary. I think there's a couple that we'll talk about later that hang out in the hundreds or thousands. But generally, like if you're an eel of size, you're going to be swimming around by yourself, backing up by yourself, beeping by yourself. they migrate and you know we'll talk more about how they spawn later because it was a bit of a mystery for a long long time and still kind of is in some ways yeah but they do migrate to a spawning area and they think they use the earth's magnetic fields they use magnetite in their bodies

8:57Chuck Bryant:to navigate yeah and they're not the only animals that do so we don't know for a fact we just know that there is magnetite in their heads and that that is probably what's going on because it's so spectacular, the migrations that they undergo. That's essentially the only explanation we have on hand.

9:16Josh Clark:That's right. If they are in tropical areas, warmer waters, where they migrate to spawn is probably nearish. But if they're in the colder areas, it seems like they migrate to the warmer areas to spawn. So they may have to go a long way. Yeah.

9:30Chuck Bryant:It's like how people in the Caribbean, they don't go on vacation because they live on vacation.

9:35Josh Clark:That's right.

9:36Chuck Bryant:And like you said, electric eels aren't eels. And there's really not a whole lot else to say about electric eels, really.

9:42Josh Clark:No, they're knife fish. They're closer to a catfish than an eel. Sure. So forget those guys.

9:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah, pretty much. We really look to, we're like electric eels. We got to find out, even though they're not eels, they got to be kind of interesting. Not really. So sorry, everybody.

10:01Josh Clark:Yeah. But what is interesting is the moray eel. This is the sort of the most famous of the of the ocean dwelling eels, the saltwater eels, a member of the family Muranide. 15 genera there, 200 species, makes up about 25 % of all the eels. And they live like, you know, if you've ever been snorkeling or scuba diving, you probably haven't seen one during the day. But if you've ever gone and put your face in a hidey hole in that coral, maybe you could see one because that's where they like to hide.

10:32Chuck Bryant:Yes. Be careful, though, because they probably will bite you if you stick your face in their hidey hole.

10:37Josh Clark:Yeah, I did that a little bit in Belize. I was asked the snorkel fishing guys with this. They were spear fishing and stuff, and I was like, like with spear guns. I was like, can you teach me? They're like, come on, just follow along. And then, you know, he told me, dive down there and put your face in that hole. Tell me what you see. Did he really? Yeah, yeah, it was cool. I was trying to do it like they did it, you know. Sure. But I didn't get anything. They did, but I didn't. Did you see any of that? No, but it was a little scary to put your face down there, you know.

11:07Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I mean, doing that above ground can be pretty unnerving. Under the sea, that's just scary.

11:13Josh Clark:Yeah, I felt like Timothy Dalton in Flash Gordon when he reached his hand into that thing.

11:20Chuck Bryant:Or I guess Indiana Jones, didn't he do that in one of them? Where he had to stick his arm in spiders everywhere?

11:28Josh Clark:Yeah, they were insects. He had to stick his hand, I think, reaching for a lever or something.

11:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so great. One of my favorites are, it's a type of mori, it's called a ribbon eel. Did you look pictures up of these guys?

11:41Josh Clark:Oh, yeah, they're gorgeous.

11:42Chuck Bryant:Gorgeous. So they're very appropriately named. They're very flat and wide. They do look like ribbons, especially when they're undulating through the water. But one of the cool things is that they're born as males, blue and yellow males. And then all of a sudden they go, boop, I'm an all yellow female now. Yeah. Check me out. And they can reproduce either way, depending on what phase of life they're in.

12:07Josh Clark:Yeah, they're just incredible. Very bright, almost fluorescent, like kind of one of those, you know, undersea colors that just don't feel like they should exist in nature. But it definitely exists in the ocean.

12:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah, beautiful.

12:20Josh Clark:All right. So if you know Amore, you know they have a great smile. They're known for those really scary looking teeth. They have two sets of jaws. Because the second set, the pharyngeal jaw faces backwards to kind of lock you in and keep you from escaping if they have you in their grasp. But they're not after you. You don't need to be afraid of the mori eel. Like if they get you in the water, it's probably because you're in there at night and it's obviously an accident. They're not like after people.

12:50Chuck Bryant:Right. They only get you when you stick your face in their hidey hole.

12:54Josh Clark:Yeah, I guess so.

12:55Chuck Bryant:One of the reasons why people are like, man, those things look really aggressive is because they show their teeth a lot. And that's not because they're trying to scare you or because they're really proud of their teeth. It's because they lack opercula, which are those plate-like covers that go over fish gills, you know, that they kind of go back and forth on. Yeah, they flap them. Remember like that Monty Python sketch with the meaning of life where they're goldfish and they're moving their hands? They were simulating opercula. And one of the things opercula does is it regulates and kind of moves water over the gills.

13:28Chuck Bryant:Well, the mores don't have that, so they have to get a lot of water through their mouth, and then that's how they funnel the water through the gills. And, of course, the gills is where the oxygen is absorbed out of the water into the circulation.

13:41Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So that's when you're going to see the teeth. Like I said, you're not going to get bitten most likely, but if you do, it's not going to be fun for you. No. Those teeth are very sharp. It's a very painful bite, apparently, because it punctures very deep. So it can always get like tendons and nerves and stuff. And while they are not venomous, they do that slime. They have slime in their mouths as well. And it's a substance called hemagglutinin. And it causes red blood cells to clump up. But they also, they think they generate something called a crinotoxin. And so that destroys red blood cells.

14:21Josh Clark:So all of that stuff is A, why it's painful, and it can be like super prone to infection. Those teeth can break off in your wound. It's really not good. Yeah.

14:32Chuck Bryant:I saw crinotoxins also are the reason catfish stings hurt.

14:36Josh Clark:Yeah. I feel like we talked about that in our noodling episode.

14:39Chuck Bryant:That makes sense. Yeah, that's like sticking your face in a hidey hole, but using your arm instead of your face.

14:45Josh Clark:That's right. Right.

14:47Chuck Bryant:So the moray is a type of ocean eel, and you can kind of divide eels into ocean and freshwater, as we'll see. Although ocean eels are far and away the largest in number and type, right? Yeah. One of the other big, I guess, ocean eels is called the conger from family congeridae. And they are like deep water dwellers, like 3 ,000 feet below the surface. Some of them hang out in some rocky areas like mores, maybe around coral reefs. But the thing that's remarkable about the European conger is that that's the heaviest one, right?

15:26Josh Clark:Yeah, they're not as long and slender as the more. They're still long and snake-like, but they're rounder. Like the biggest one recorded is 242 pounds.

15:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

15:38Josh Clark:Which is, you know, it's a game fish. So if you've got a 242-pounder, that's a pretty good catch that day.

15:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's like how much a couch weighs. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm so glad I said that because I've been forgetting just to mention this. So our dear, awesome friend, Brandon Reed, right?

15:56Josh Clark:Uh-huh.

15:58Chuck Bryant:He created, he's our webmaster, everybody. He runs and created StuffYouShouldKnow.com. Yeah, and pal. Yes, and great, great pal. He created a website called Josh Clark Calculates. And you can go to joshclarkcalculates.com. I didn't know about this. And get this. So you can basically describe anything in a measurement of whatever you want. So somebody is eight Big Macs tall. So you can select Big Macs, Olympic swimming pools, all the stuff that we've ever used to essentially describe the size or shape or volume of something you can now do on joshclarkcalculates.com.

16:38Josh Clark:Why am I just now learning about this?

16:41Chuck Bryant:Because I kept forgetting to mention it. And he showed it to me before. I guess he showed it to me in Chicago when he came to the show.

16:48Josh Clark:All right. I'm looking at it now. Josh Clark calculates the weirdest way to measure absolutely anything. Right. Then the example on the homepage is the space shuttle Endeavor has the speed of how many washing machines? And you press a button and it says beep boop. The space shuttle Endeavor has the speed of 22 ,778 washing machines.

17:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and he was telling me, like, those are legitimate measurements, like comparisons.

17:17Josh Clark:Well, this is my new favorite homepage.

17:19Chuck Bryant:Isn't that awesome? Yeah, that's very cool. He is so cool, man. Love Brandon.

17:22Josh Clark:We'll have to get a band name generator or something going.

17:25Chuck Bryant:Ooh, that's a good idea, too.

17:27Josh Clark:All right. That was a lot of fun. I feel like we should take a break. Everyone can go visit that website and calculate some stuff. And we'll be back with more about eels.

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20:33Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, we're back. And now we're going to talk about my favorite kind of eel. Is this your favorite kind of eel?

20:38Josh Clark:Yeah, these cute little guys look like plants.

20:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So I've seen these before. I had no idea they were eels, but they're like, yeah, little worm-like stems sticking up out of the sandy bottom, waving kind of back and forth with the current. And there's so many of them. It does. It looks like just kind of a field of plants. But if you zoom in, they are these cute little eels with cute little faces. Yeah. Just eating plankton that goes past, and they spend most of their lives cemented in the sandy bottom. Even though they're able to get out and move free, that's just kind of where they live. It's also their hidey hole, too.

21:14Josh Clark:Yeah, they're called garden eels, and I think when they get startled, their whole body goes back in their little burrow. But yeah, these are the ones that can hang out together, so it'll look like a little field of seagrass. There'd be thousands of these little guys just waving around.

21:28Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they're so cute, too. Just look up garden eel and look at their little, very serious faces.

21:36Josh Clark:If you are an eel that's living deep in the ocean, you're not going to be one of the colorful ones. You're probably going to be black or dull gray. And the gulper eel is another one that you should look up when it's safe to do so. This is, it's also called the pelican eel. They're all over the world, basically in tropical and temperate climates. And they are very deep dwellers, like 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 feet below the surface. Yeah. And they look crazy. They're a few feet long, and their jaw is really the star of the show. It's a lot bigger than their skull, and it can unhinge and act as a scoop.

22:10Josh Clark:It looks sort of like, I mean, they call it pelican for a reason. It looks pelican-esque, but it's shaped like a shovel, like if a shovel and a bucket got together and made it, this is what it would look like.

22:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and it doesn't always look like that, right? So when it like changes shape, it looks extremely alien. It's really neat. The video I saw was Gulper eel balloons its massive jaw on Nautilus Live. And it's just amazing to watch that thing do its thing.

22:42Josh Clark:Yeah, I agree. Very, very cool. This next section to me is kind of one of the most astounding things that I didn't know about. It is the fact that eels have a real big significance in human history, and especially in medieval Europe. But we're talking mainly about the American eel, the European eel, and the Japanese eel. These are freshwater eels. They go to spawn in the oceans, but they live in freshwater, and they were a huge, huge source of food for a very long time in a lot of parts of the world.

23:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and still are. Japan loves unagi.

23:21Josh Clark:Oh, yeah.

23:23Chuck Bryant:So, yeah, one of the reasons why they played such a role as a food source around the world is that, number one, they were easy to come by. Like, literally, they're swimming around in streams and rivers all over the northern hemisphere. And in addition to that, they're really, really nutritious, it turns out. High in protein, lots of vitamin B12, vitamin A, vitamin D. that's hard to come by if you're not out in the sun.

23:51Josh Clark:Yeah. B12, for God's sake? Yeah.

23:53Chuck Bryant:Yes. And only 375 calories for an eel filet, which is actually pretty calorie dense for a fish. But it's very good for you too.

24:05Josh Clark:Yeah. A lot of good fat and protein in there as well. And that unagi that I used to love to eat, I would cook it up myself. It was delicious.

24:14Chuck Bryant:Oh, really? You cooked it yourself?

24:17Josh Clark:Yeah, I think I talked about this before. There's near the DeKalb Farmer's Market near where I live, there's the, I think it's called the First Oriental Market. And they sell eel as well as lots of like kitchen wares and kind of cool stuff from Japan. But yeah, you can go get eel there out of the fridge and bake it in your oven and coat it with some. I use teriyaki, but I think traditionally is the kabyaki sauce is used.

24:42Chuck Bryant:Is that right?

24:43Josh Clark:To drill those things up. And it's, I mean, kabayaki is basically the same. I think it just doesn't have like, I think it's like a stripped down teriyaki. It doesn't have ginger and garlic in it.

24:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think it's also a little thicker too, right?

24:55Josh Clark:I don't know. I think it's about the same, but it's just, it's kind of just the sweet stuff.

25:00Chuck Bryant:It is very good. I agree with you. Nothing in here really put me off of eel, especially unagi. Hey, that's good for you. One of the things, you haven't screamed yet. We haven't reached that part yet, huh? No, no. Okay. So one of the reasons unagi is, I guess, noteworthy in Japanese culture, one, as far as sushi goes, it's one of the rare parts of sushi that's ever cooked, like, across the board.

25:28Josh Clark:Yeah.

25:29Chuck Bryant:And then number two, it's called one of the big four foods of the Edo period, which I think ran from the 17th century to the 19th century. Those four were soba, sushi, and Dr. Pepper.

25:45Josh Clark:I know this answer, so you didn't get me this time.

25:49Chuck Bryant:What is the other one?

25:50Josh Clark:The other one is tempura. And you mentioned it's the only one that's like routinely cooked because you have to, because eel blood is toxic to humans. So you have to grill that stuff up just right. Yeah. This is one of the things that astounded me is I didn't know that it was such a big deal in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada before and after colonization. So indigenous peoples loved eel. I think eels made up about a quarter, more than a quarter of the fish bound in streams along the coast of the of northern northeastern northern America.

26:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

26:22Josh Clark:And, you know, you could smoke it and carry it with you on the trail. You could salt it and cure it. And obviously you could, you know, trap them and grill them up.

26:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I think one of the things that I've read somewhere is that like an eel fillet is it does not taste fishy. I saw it compared to a taste of venison even. My experience with eel has never been like that. It's always been like a little bit like on sushi. Did you ever eat like a big hunk of eel at once?

26:57Josh Clark:uh no it's always just been you know like you would eat on sushi but they come in a in a long eel-like package sure and you know you just bake it in the oven i think they're already pre-cooked um oh gotcha okay okay so you're so they maybe shrunk or something but you're you're basically

27:16Chuck Bryant:just heating it up and glazing it i gotcha smoked eel sounds kind of good i would try smoked eel

27:21Josh Clark:Yeah, it sounds really good.

27:23Chuck Bryant:So it wasn't just the indigenous peoples of North America who were eating eel. The people in Europe at the same time were crazy for eel and had been for centuries and centuries. Apparently they found old willow traps, which are basically like woven baskets that are easy to get into and hard to get out of. That eel would swim into and they'd be like, oh no, not again. And they would become smoked or salted or dried. And very interestingly, Chuck, they would often be used as currency. That's how valued eel were, but also how common they were, too.

28:00Josh Clark:Yeah, this is the fact of this episode for me. I had no idea that in medieval times, not at medieval times, but during medieval times, about half a million dried eels were used to pay rent in England every single year.

28:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for all sorts of debts. And I mean, it continued on for a very long time. And to kill a mockingbird, Walter Cunningham from Old Serum pays Atticus Finch and a thousand live eels in one point.

28:29Josh Clark:Is that for real? No. Yeah. Oh, man. I've never wanted to cuss so bad on the show.

28:35Chuck Bryant:No. And the reason why that's a giveaway, Chuck, is that I said live eels. Nobody wanted the live eels. Oh, I didn't hear that part. Prepared, smoked, dried. And then depending on how many were put together, did you see like there were different names for like 10 eels together? Yeah, yeah. Or 25 eels together?

28:54Josh Clark:Like wrap them up in, what was a stick was one?

28:57Chuck Bryant:Uh-huh. That's like 25.

28:59Josh Clark:Okay.

29:00Chuck Bryant:And then, no, that's 10. A stick was 10. Yeah. A bind is 25. And those are basically, they were treated like denominations. Like I'll give you a bind of eels for that can of Dr. Pepper.

29:13Josh Clark:Yeah, two vines and a stick. Yeah, pretty much. That'd be 25? It'd be 60. We should type it into Josh Clark Calculates and see.

29:23Chuck Bryant:It'd be like, does not compute.

29:25Josh Clark:There needs to be one in there for Josh Clark Calculates. It's like, how many eels would it take to live in the East Village for a month?

29:32Chuck Bryant:That's a good one, man.

29:33Josh Clark:In whatever year.

29:35Chuck Bryant:10 trillion eels.

29:37Josh Clark:Or how many sticks is that?

29:40Chuck Bryant:That's a trillion sticks. Oh, okay.

29:43Josh Clark:Thank you. That was an easy one. They were very popular food-wise, though, during church holidays and during fasting seasons because, and this is like up to like a few months out of the year or more than that, 120 days. Yeah, that's like six months.

30:00Chuck Bryant:A quarter of the year.

30:02Josh Clark:Oh, yeah. A third. Oh, God. Here we go.

30:04Chuck Bryant:A third. A third.

30:06Josh Clark:All right. I'm going to type it into your website again. you could not eat meat, but you could eat fish during those fasting seasons. So because there were so many eels, they were, you know, it was a pretty attractive meal.

30:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah, a nice meal of eels. That's right. There was one other reason, too, that we'll see why they were highly thought of for fasting during Christian or Catholic, I guess, feast days, was that they have long been considered asexual. because as we'll see, people have no idea how they reproduced. And I thought that was pretty interesting.

30:44Josh Clark:Yeah, super interesting.

30:45Chuck Bryant:Like regular fish that have sex would just make you think of nothing but sex while you're eating them, I guess. But an eel, you're all good.

30:52Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, should we take a break or should we talk about the reproduction now?

30:57Chuck Bryant:I think we take a break, man.

30:59Josh Clark:Okay, all right. We're going to talk about how they reproduce right after this.

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33:57Josh Clark:All right, everybody, back to the mystery of eel reproduction. In the old days, in the classical Mediterranean era, they had all kinds of crazy ideas about how eels reproduce because they seemed to just appear. No one ever saw them doing it. No one ever saw eel eggs. People had cut eels open and found no reproductive organs. They were, seems to be, unusually preoccupied with this, in my opinion. They had a lot of weird opinions and theories as well, right?

34:29Chuck Bryant:Sure, sure. But imagine if, like, you know how much cow, say chicken.

34:35Josh Clark:Okay.

34:36Chuck Bryant:Humans eat a lot of chicken. Imagine if while you're eating chicken, you're like, where the hell do chickens come from? No one has any idea. I love this chicken. It's delicious. But I have no idea how chickens are born.

34:48Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, you probably should have picked something that doesn't lay an egg in front of you. But, yeah.

34:52Chuck Bryant:Sure.

34:53Josh Clark:I get what you mean.

34:54Chuck Bryant:But I think that's another reason why the mystery is so deep is they're like, yeah, chickens lay eggs. Pigs, they love to do it. Like they knew how everything else came about, basically. Eels, they're like, I guess they just spontaneously generate.

35:10Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Finally, in 1777, there was an Italian surgeon and researcher named Carlo Mondini. and he finally, don't ask me how, but he finally located the ovaries of an eel. And for decades, no one could replicate that fact. And then eventually they found the testicles as well. And no less than Sigmund Freud was one of the people looking for those eel testes.

35:38Chuck Bryant:My friend, he was the one who found them.

35:41Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, this was earlier in his career, but he dissected 400 eels, I guess, he on the 401st found them.

35:48Chuck Bryant:It's always the last eel you look in.

35:51Josh Clark:Yeah.

35:52Chuck Bryant:So, yeah. So, Freud was the person who identified for the first time, people have been thinking about this for 2 ,000 years at least, how eels reproduce. But at the same time, they're like, great, they have gonads, they have ovaries. Where do they, like, why don't we ever see them using these things? Why don't we ever see their babies? This is all very weird. So the mystery continued even after Freud, although it was really kind of starting to heat up around that time. I think Freud found the gonads in 1876, and within a couple of decades, I think within a decade, they had far more material to work with than they had.

36:31Chuck Bryant:So, like, it went from 2 ,000 years of not knowing what the heck was going on to bam, bam, bam. We almost have it figured out.

36:38Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Like, we knew that they metamorphosized. we knew that those glass eels, they're basically transparent little babies. They would show up in coastal waters every spring, and they knew that they turned into adolescent eels. They're called elvers. And they know that they would eventually turn color and swim up rivers, and they knew they would eventually become yellow eels and that they love to eat those things. And then eventually they would become silver eels. It's the final stop on the eel train. Sure. And that is when they develop the equipment to reproduce and go up river into the ocean.

37:16Josh Clark:But the part between silver eels going from the river and then the glass eel floating around was the mystery.

37:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah. But if you put those two things together, like, OK, the glass eels show up on the coast, the silver eels swim out to sea. Seems like that these freshwater eels breeding grounds are somewhere out there in the ocean. It's got to be right.

37:37Josh Clark:Yeah.

37:38Chuck Bryant:So before that, there was this idea that there were these little things, almost plankton-like organisms, or I think they were plankton, which apparently the definition of plankton is any floating sea life that just gets moved along by the current, can't move around itself. Mm-hmm. There were these little tiny floating, I guess they were shaped like willow leaves, and they were identified as Leptocephalus brevirostris. rostrus. And they thought this was a whole different type of fish. And it turned out what they were looking at were the larva of eels. They misidentified them as something, and it took like a couple of decades before they were like, nope, this is actually eel larva.

38:22Chuck Bryant:And they found out thanks to a French guy named Yves Delage, who probably was quite surprised when he put one of these things in a tank.

38:30Josh Clark:Yeah, he put one in a tank and saw it go through every metamorphosis, I guess. I would assume he kept getting bigger tanks unless he had a big one to begin with. But eventually it became a glass and then an elver. And then about 10 years after that, there was an Italian zoologist named Giovanni Battista who saw this happen out in the wild. And so, all right, we really are cooking with gas now. But where do those little silver eels go? Where are they going to make this larva? but they still hadn't figured out that part.

39:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah, once they mature. So there's a Dutch marine biologist named Ernst Johan Schmidt, which is a great Danish name. I think I said Dutch, right? He's a Dane. Sorry, Danish people. He was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation, and yet they were founded by the beer company. And they essentially funded scientific expeditions, and they funded Ernst Schmidt. and he started, he just basically set out to figure out this mystery of how silver eels produce the little willow leaf larva.

39:38Josh Clark:That's right. So he started fishing, casting his nets along the coast, and he found them in the North Sea, he found them in the Mediterranean, and they were pretty big by this point. So he was like, I don't think this is where they started because they've grown a little too much. So he got together with some commercial fishing boats, said, hey, I could use some help because you guys are all over the Atlantic. And they helped him out. And in 1912, he had a report finally to publish that said these little small larvae and silver eels are, which is the end stage, all the way out in the mid-Atlantic, in the middle of nowhere.

40:19Yeah.

40:20Chuck Bryant:So he was like, I think that they probably breed in the Sargasso Sea. And he never found them. He never saw that they were in the Sargasso Sea, but it turned out he was correct.

40:33Josh Clark:That's right. Sargasso Sea apparently is a pretty rich breeding ground for a lot of reasons. One reason, because of the brown sargasm that floats on top. I think it just creates a sort of a nice covered shady habitat.

40:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

40:48Josh Clark:And it's not just the eels. I think a lot of things kind of reproduce in the Sargasso Sea.

40:52Chuck Bryant:For sure. And the reason the Sargasso Sea is remarkable is it's a sea in the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, for sure. And it's kept in place by, I think, four currents that kind of come together and create a gyre. And in the middle of this gyre is what we call the Sargasso Sea. And it's relatively still compared to the rest of the ocean. It's very high in saline and it stays pretty warm. It's largely off the coast of the eastern United States, I believe, is where it's mostly situated, all the way out to the Azores. Azores. Yeah. Azores. Azores. Sure. And it turns out that in, I think, 2018, a European team led by Rosalind Wright found out that, yes, Ernst Schmidt was correct, that they do, eels do actually mate in the Sargasso Sea.

41:48Josh Clark:That's right. Now, that's those. There are other freshwater eels that spawn in other places, obviously. They don't all go there.

41:54Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

41:55Josh Clark:I think Japanese eels spawn at these underwater mountains around the Mariana Ridge, which is pretty incredible.

42:04Chuck Bryant:So neat.

42:04Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah.

42:06Chuck Bryant:And then I think African longfin eels spawn in the Indian Ocean. And you might say, like, who cares? Like, yeah, it was a mystery. But think about this. Eels are like halfway up the Rhine in Germany. Yeah. And they're like, well, it's time for me to go reproduce. I'm getting to be that age. They swim all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean, swim all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargasso Sea. That's where they mate. And then their little tiny larva, these little floating plankton, make their way all the way back to Europe again, where they turn into glass eels, then alvers, and then swim back up and take their place up the Rhine until they do the same thing.

42:51Chuck Bryant:That's a very strange reproductive strategy, but that's what eels do.

42:55Josh Clark:Yeah. Eels are like salmon. Please.

42:59Chuck Bryant:Exactly. Yeah, there's a word for it I can't quite bring to mind. I want to say catacephalic. That might be it, but essentially they're born in the ocean, but they live their lives in fresh water.

43:09Josh Clark:Oh, yeah. Yeah. What was that word? I remember seeing it now.

43:14Chuck Bryant:Catacephalic. Catalytic. It's probably wrong, but I'm going to say that authoritatively.

43:19Josh Clark:All right. So today, eels, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the red list, lists them as threatened species. The European eels are critically endangered and the American, Japanese and New Zealand longfin eels are endangered.

43:37Josh Clark:Okay. I'm screaming out. I can see that.

43:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

43:40Josh Clark:Because they're endangered. And then some of this other stuff to come was a pretty big turnoff for me as far as eating them goes.

43:45Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I guess that puts me off of eating eels.

43:47Josh Clark:Hey, no pressure, bud. American and European eel populations have dropped by more than 90 % since the 1970s.

43:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

43:55Josh Clark:Same with Japanese eel populations. Hydropower turbines and dams is a big reason. We know that they disrupt all sorts of underwater aquatic life. Sure. But also overfishing, the loss of wetlands and pollution. So, you know, the eels that you eat, and this almost got me back on it, They're raised in aquaculture facilities. Okay. They aren't bred in captivity because it's really hard to do, as obviously that we've seen. Their reproduction is pretty tricky overall.

44:26Chuck Bryant:Right.

44:27Josh Clark:So if they were to try and do that, they would have to introduce hormones to induce sexual development. Keeping those larvae alive is really difficult in captivity just because of the organic matter that exists in the wild. Like, they really need that stuff. So what they do is they capture those little glass eels in the wild and bring them to the farms to raise them to maturity so you can eat them. Right.

44:52Chuck Bryant:And one of the reasons, maybe the reason that American and European eels have dropped by 90 % since the 70s is that when you're taking these glass eels out of the ocean, number one, you're preventing that same number of eels from ever growing up to reproduce because they're going to get eaten before they get a chance to. And two, if eels follow any kind of typical evolutionary strategy, they probably have a ton of larva and a huge percentage of them die off. And the glass eels are the ones that make it. So what you're doing is saying, like, thanks for the surviving larva, everybody. We're going to take them and eat them.

45:30Chuck Bryant:So that prevents an entire species from reproducing for the most part. And that's why their stocks have died off from those fisheries.

45:39Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think we skipped the part where, like, didn't they tag eels to track them?

45:45Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's how they found out Rosalind Wright in 2018. Oh, okay. That's how they found out. But, yeah, I forgot to mention that part.

45:50Josh Clark:Yeah, it's crazy to tag a little eel. Maine, the U.S. state of Maine, is the only state that has a glass eel fishing industry. They have licensed what they're called elvermen, because remember the elvers is the third to, I guess, the penultimate stage. Nice. There are 425 licensed elbermen that can harvest around 7 ,500 pounds between late March and early June every year, and then they ship it off to Hong Kong.

46:14Chuck Bryant:Very nice. Do you know what the third to last is called?

46:18Josh Clark:Oh, is there a word for that? Are you about to dupe me?

46:21Chuck Bryant:No, this is for real, Chuck. I promise.

46:23Josh Clark:Okay. What?

46:24Chuck Bryant:It's anti-penultimate, but like A-N-T-E, like anti-chamber. Anti-penultimate.

46:30Josh Clark:Yeah, I like that. That always reminds me, and I think I mentioned this in the Gary Larson episode, the second to the last of the Mohicans cartoon.

46:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

46:40Josh Clark:Which is just a big line of indigenous, I guess, Mohicans. And the second to the last of the one in line, everyone's facing one way and he just turned around and waving and smiling.

46:52Chuck Bryant:How great, man. Yeah. That guy. You got anything else about eels? No, that's it. Okay. Yeah. If you want to know more about eels, go watch videos about David Byrne and see what books he recommends. You can also visit your local aquarium. You can also go online and visit the website of your local aquarium. There's all sorts of stuff you can do to learn more about eels, and I urge you to. And maybe stop eating them. I'm going to, too, okay, Chuck? Really? I'm going to stop eating American or European eels for sure.

47:27Josh Clark:All right. No more unagi for us.

47:29Chuck Bryant:No, it's been a while since I had it anyway, so it's not like it's a huge give up for me. All right, good. Well, since Chuck agreed that we're both going to give up eel, it's time for Listener Mail.

47:43Josh Clark:This is from Alex, and this is a follow-up about the baking soda and coconut oil deodorant from the Listener Mail. Apparently, Alex is sort of an expert on this. Okay. Again, tread carefully whenever you're applying anything to your skin and body.

47:57Chuck Bryant:Can you refresh my memory? I don't remember that deodorant.

48:01Josh Clark:Basically, like baking soda and coconut oil, if you mix together into a paste, can be a good natural deodorant. Okay. But it can also, like, chafe your skin and cause outbreaks if you don't get the mix right. Okay. So, this is what Alex says. I've been doing this for the better part of 15 years, guys, and have continuously adjusted the recipe to balance what I found to be three main factors. Odor eliminating effectiveness, skin reaction, and staining of clothing. Baking soda is responsible for the first two and needs to be carefully balanced to be effective enough while not causing a rash. Coconut oil is commonly used to act as a concentration reduction and application medium, but it stains the clothes.

48:39Josh Clark:I found that cornstarch is excellent at being a neutral alternative to reduce the concentration of the baking soda. I usually go about equal volumes of the two, then add only enough coconut oil to make a thick paste. in a pinch if I find myself having forgotten to use deodorant I will moisten my finger and dab it directly in baking soda so that it is only very lightly dusted and then rub that on my armpits but don't do that too often guys you'll end up with unhappy pits but it's a great backup because most people have a box of baking powder open in the fridge and don't care about fingers in it because it's not there for eating no a girlfriend from another lifetime once told me I should start an armpit empire.

49:19Josh Clark:And by the way, guys, I'm in Puerto Rico. So if you ever feel like coming to do a show in the tropics, I'd be the first one out telling everyone to buy tickets. And that is Alex.

49:27Chuck Bryant:Thanks a lot, Alex. Can you just see Alex dipping his fingers in some baking soda and rubbing him on his armpit and saying, ah, refreshed.

49:35Josh Clark:I can just see it.

49:37Chuck Bryant:If you want to be like Alex and give us even more detail about a, whatever it is you know a lot about, we would love that. You can send it to us at stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

49:52Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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51:51Chuck Bryant:Those people are starving for banter.

51:54Josh Clark:Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.