Eels, Hagfish and Coelacanths

What led me to spend an hour reading about eels? Scandinavian cooking that’s what.

I love the Scandinavian Cooking show and was watching it this morning. I decided to look up a recipe on the web site and then starting doing what I do, spend three hours clicking and clicking and starting new searches in a daisy chain of information.

Initially I was looking for the recipe I saw today for muscles and aquavit, then I got distracted by the section on cocktails and that led me to food trivia where I read about the eel. Their piece on the eel is a bit fact and a bit folklore, both very interesting. I liked that the folklore involves the eels eating entire gardens of peas. Which I think could be totally true because our work goldfish (Hall) LOVES cooked and mashed peas. So, it stands to reason that all aquatic creatures love peas, and who wouldn’t; they are certainly one of my favorites.

The sea is increasingly fascinating to me. The land portions of the earth still yield new discoveries of flora and fauna and I’m sure it always will, but it is not nearly as mysterious and unknown as the deep sea. I don’t want to dive (it scares the be-Jesus out of me) but I’ve always loved to watch the shows on the deep sea.


I think it all started for me in 1976 with the discovery of the first Megamouth shark. I distinctly remember sitting in my elementary school and watching a National Geographic (or something like) educational film strip on the Megamouth discovery. It was awesome, found when a ship brought up it’s anchor in Hawaii, the image (not this one, I couldn't find a decent one of the image I recall) is still strong in my mind thirty years later. At the time it tied perfectly into my love for fantasy and dinosaurs.

Back to eels, I do like to eat eel every now and then (mostly in sushi form) but try not to think much about its freighting and prehistoric-ish appearance when I am eating it. So I’m not sure I could buy one and cook it up myself unless I was to purchase it cleaned and with out a head and even then it might be a little too much for me. The skin seems to also be a little too much for me to handle. However, I then remembered in the early 1980’s I went to Korea where eel skin was all the rage. I got a coin purse, so did my mom, and we brought back wallets for my dad and a teen crush of mine. I hadn’t really thought much about eel skin since then, although my mom does still use her coin purse and every time I see it I can’t believe she still has it and is actually using it.

Turns out the damn things weren’t even eel. They were Hagfish and if you thought eels were creepy and gross you shouldn’t even think about the Hagfish. “An adult hagfish can secrete enough slime to turn a large bucket of water into gel in a matter of minutes.” Eeew. Although the knotting ability and jaws are pretty fascinating.

Finally, that made me think of the truly prehistoric Coelacanth because they look cool and have a cool name that sticks with me. Fossil records have found them as early as the mid Paleozoic and as late as the Cretaceous. Obviously since two species still exist not all species became extinct but we don’t have the fossil records to prove where they went in-between. The theory is the deep-sea species survived but that all the shallow dwelling species died out.


A fascinating way to spend three hours.