Consider the Eel

Consider the Eel PDF Author: Richard Schweid
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807899267
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Journalist Richard Schweid first learned the strange facts of the freshwater eel's life from a fisherman in a small Spanish town just south of Valencia. "The eeler who explained the animal's life cycle to me did so as he served up an eel he had just taken from a trap, killed, cleaned, and cooked in olive oil in an earthenware dish," writes Schweid. "I ate it with a chunk of fresh, crusty bread. It was delicious. I was immediately fascinated." As this engaging culinary and natural history reveals, the humble eel is indeed an amazing creature. Every European and American eel begins its life in the Sargasso Sea--a vast, weedy stretch of deep Atlantic waters between Bermuda and the Azores. Larval eels drift for up to three years until they reach the rivers of North America or Europe, where they mature and live as long as two decades before returning to the Sargasso to mate and die. Eels have never been bred successfully in captivity. Consulting fisherfolk, cooks, and scientists, Schweid takes the reader on a global tour to reveal the economic and gastronomic importance of eel in places such as eastern North Carolina, Spain, Northern Ireland, England, and Japan. (While this rich yet mild-tasting fish has virtually disappeared from U.S. tables, over $2 billion worth of eel is still eagerly consumed in Europe and Asia each year.) The book also includes recipes, both historic and contemporary, for preparing eel.

Consider the Eel

Consider the Eel PDF Author: Richard Schweid
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807899267
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
Journalist Richard Schweid first learned the strange facts of the freshwater eel's life from a fisherman in a small Spanish town just south of Valencia. "The eeler who explained the animal's life cycle to me did so as he served up an eel he had just taken from a trap, killed, cleaned, and cooked in olive oil in an earthenware dish," writes Schweid. "I ate it with a chunk of fresh, crusty bread. It was delicious. I was immediately fascinated." As this engaging culinary and natural history reveals, the humble eel is indeed an amazing creature. Every European and American eel begins its life in the Sargasso Sea--a vast, weedy stretch of deep Atlantic waters between Bermuda and the Azores. Larval eels drift for up to three years until they reach the rivers of North America or Europe, where they mature and live as long as two decades before returning to the Sargasso to mate and die. Eels have never been bred successfully in captivity. Consulting fisherfolk, cooks, and scientists, Schweid takes the reader on a global tour to reveal the economic and gastronomic importance of eel in places such as eastern North Carolina, Spain, Northern Ireland, England, and Japan. (While this rich yet mild-tasting fish has virtually disappeared from U.S. tables, over $2 billion worth of eel is still eagerly consumed in Europe and Asia each year.) The book also includes recipes, both historic and contemporary, for preparing eel.

The Book of Eels

The Book of Eels PDF Author: Patrik Svensson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062968831
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world’s most elusive fish—the eel—and a reflection on the human condition Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery. Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant. A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize National Bestseller Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book One of TIME’s 100 Must Read Books of the Year One of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Nonfiction Books of the Year One of Smithsonian Magazine’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Year A New York Times Editor’s Choice

Eels

Eels PDF Author: James Prosek
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062008811
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
“Eels [is] more than a fish book. It is an impassioned defense of nature itself. . . . [Prosek] passes on the truth that the often disdained eel, like all migratory fish, is vital and mysterious and worthy of our full effort to bring it back.” — New York Times Book Review “A wonderful account of far-flung travels in pursuit of the secrets of the earth’s most mysterious fish. . . . Fascinating and beautifully rendered.” — Peter Matthiessen Famous for his deeply informed, compulsively readable books on trout, James Prosek (whom the New York Times has called “the Audubon of the fishing world”) takes on nature’s quirkiest and most enigmatic fish: the eel. Fans of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and The Big Oyster or Trevor Corson’s The Secret Life of Lobsters will love Prosek’s probing exploration of the hidden deep-water dwellers. With characteristically captivating prose and lavish illustrations, Prosek demystifies the eel’s unique biology and bizarre mating routines, and illuminates the animal’s varied roles in the folklore, cuisine, and commerce of a variety of cultures.

Bulletin

Bulletin PDF Author: New York Zoological Society
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Zoology
Languages : en
Pages : 650

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Book Description
Vol. 31, no. 1, Jan./Feb. 1928, commemorates "A quarter-century of the New York Aquarium."

The Common Eel, and Its Capture

The Common Eel, and Its Capture PDF Author: William Leadbetter Calderwood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Eels
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description


Relicts of a Beautiful Sea

Relicts of a Beautiful Sea PDF Author: Christopher Norment
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618664
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Relicts of a Beautiful Sea: Survival, Extinction, and Conservation in a Desert World

Hardwicke's Science-gossip

Hardwicke's Science-gossip PDF Author: Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Natural history
Languages : en
Pages : 890

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Book Description


Miscellaneous Documents

Miscellaneous Documents PDF Author: United States. Congress. Senate
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 1050

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Book Description


Biocidal

Biocidal PDF Author: Theodore Michael Dracos
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080701155X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
The first full account of the scientific and political dynamics of global PCB contamination, and its threat to human health and the environment Whether or not you've heard of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), it's likely that this toxic chemical can be found in your cells. PCBs were invented in 1920 for the electronics industry, fueled the WWII military machine, then were put to domestic uses, and finally came to be present in every corner of the earth. Because PCBs were outlawed in 1976, most people think they are no longer a threat. However, like many industrial chemicals, PCBs persist in our environment and continue to accumulate in practically every life form on earth, becoming more concentrated in the tissues of those highest on the food chain--like us. In Biocidal, investigative journalist Ted Dracos explores the science behind how PCBs affect the environment, amphibians, fish, and mammals. He also draws on extensive research to document the connection between PCBs and catastrophic human illness. From the beginning--even as workers in the first manufacturing plants quickly began to suffer skin lesions, boils, liver failure, and death--the industry denied the danger of its chemicals and manipulated science, regulatory agencies, and the government to continue to make and distribute PCBs throughout the next half-century. Dracos provides the latest scientific findings in the heated controversy that surrounds the continued health impacts of PCBs, ranging from cancer to immunosupression, endocrine disruption, fetal brain development, reproductive abnormalities, and even autism. Yet Biocidal is optimistic, leaving readers with a complete and surprisingly uncomplicated blueprint of what can be done--and is being done--to counter the risks and damages of PCBs and other industrial chemicals.

Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop

Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop PDF Author: Euell Gibbons
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811769011
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This foraging and cooking classic was first published in 1964 and has continued to be one of America’s most appreciated works on the subject of seafood. As a young man, Euell Gibbons kept his family alive during the Dust Bowl era by gathering wild foods. In later years he foraged for seafood all over the coastlines of North America and even Hawaii. He drew on his extensive experience and research to write his “Stalking” series, books which have entered the American lexicon and which remain the starting point for serious foragers. Euell Gibbons tells how to find marvelous food in every coastal area of North America.This book contains numerous drawings for identification and hundreds of recipes and cooking tips from chowders and clambakes to simple epicurean treats such as boiled periwinkles dipped in melted butter.