May 4, 2018--Elvers

In a few days we will be heading to Maine. 

One thing we look forward to is spending six months with the TV turned off. We do get the New York Times to keep in touch with the news but even more for the crossword puzzle. We try to keep things there as simple and peaceful and deeply soul-satisfying as possible. To help with this we do some disconnecting from the wider world and some of its problems. This helps. Especially now when things have become so ugly and raw. 

In Maine for us it's about pursuing happiness Declaration of Independence style, where the happiness being pursued is more about contentment than jollity.

And, we find, if we want to, there are other ways to stay connected to that larger world other than paying obsessive attention to what's going on with North Korea, Syria, trade wars, and the dislocating and agitating effects of globalization.

But, then, since globalization presumably affects everyone and everything, there should be evidence of it in the Midcoast. And indeed there is.

Take baby eels for example. Elvers.

In a few places on the planet they spawn in the ocean and then migrate to fresh water where they grow to adult size. More than anywhere else these elvers find their way across the Gulf of Maine and then enter the tidal estuaries and fresh water streams of the coast just 15 miles from where we spend the season.

But before they are allowed to grow to adult size they are netted by a fortunate one thousand fishermen who have state permission to fish for them. "Fortunate," since this year elvers are expected to go for up to $2,800 a pound. Great news as last year they brought less than half that, just $1,300. 

It is. estimated that the total yield for the elver fishermen will reach a promising $26 million by the end of the season. 

The record prices this year are the result of poor winter harvests around the globe. The elvers in Maine thus are part of the globalized market in baby eels.

That globalized market is complex and spans the oceans. The reason prices are so high in Maine this year is because captures of japonica eels in the western Pacific have been low and this in turn has boosted prices for Atlantic eels. But catches in Asia are surging and that soon will result in a price decline in Maine. 

Elvers are sold to Japanese buyers who fly them to Japan where they are allowed to become adults and after that find there way to only the best sushi restaurants where they are, as unagi, in great demand.

In fact, in the fall, our local New York City Japanese restaurant  Sharaku, serves them as very special delicacies. 

Before knowing about the Maine connection and the triangular trade route that circles the globe and brings them via their unique supply chain from up the road from our Maine place and then some months later to Sharaku, just two blocks from here, fresh eel unagi are my favorite kind of sushi, served on rice, sauced by a slowly reduced blend or mirin, sake, sugar, and soy.