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"Hunting the Elusive Glass Eel."

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

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In today’s newsletter, the eels and the elvermen, and then: • Anthony Fauci on his side of the story • Apple brings A.I. to your phone • Britain’s aging nuclear-weapons infrastructure

Inside the Slimy, Smelly, Secretive World of Glass-Eel Fishing

Each spring, hundreds of millions of baby eels swarm the waterways of coastal Maine. Soaring global demand incited an era of jackpot payouts and international poaching. Illustration by Agnes Jonas The Sargasso Sea, a warm, calm expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean, is bordered not by land but by four strong currents—a gyre. Vast mats of prickly brown seaweed float so thickly on the windless surface that Christopher Columbus worried about his ships getting stuck. The biodiverse sanctuary within and beneath the sargassum produces Anguilla rostrata, the American eel. Each female lays some eight million eggs. The eggs hatch as ribbonlike larvae that drift to the Gulf Stream, which carries them to the continental shelf. By the time they reach Maine, the larvae have transformed into swimmers about the length of an index finger, with the circumference of a bean sprout and the translucence of a jellyfish. Hence their nickname, glass eels, also known as elvers. The glass eel is barely visible, but for a dark stripe—its developing backbone—and a couple of chia seeds for eyes. “Ghosts on the water,” a Maine fisherman once called them. Travelling almost as one, like a swarm or a murmuration, glass eels enter tidal rivers and push upstream, pursuing the scent of freshwater until, ideally, they reach a pond and commence a long, tranquil life of bottom-feeding. Elvers mature into adults two to three feet in length, with the girth and the coloring of a slimy bicycle tire. Then, one distant autumn, on some unknown cue, they return to the Sargasso, where they spawn and die. Keep reading

Annals of Technology

Infinite Scroll

Apple Is Bringing A.I. to Your Personal Life, Like It or Not

The iPhone maker’s introduction of Apple Intelligence marks a step into a new technological era—call it the domestication of generative A.I. By Kyle Chayka Letter from the U.K.

Britain’s Embrace of the Bomb

The country’s nuclear-weapons program is in bad shape, yet it is one of only two nations actively rearming. What’s it all for? By Sam Knight

Editor’s Pick

Books

Anthony Fauci’s Side of the Story

The former NIAID director has been both lauded and demonized for his work during the COVID pandemic, but his autobiography insists that his career needs to be seen whole to be understood. By Jerome Groopman Cartoon by Will McPhail

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The Strange Journey of John Lennon’s Stolen Patek Philippe Watch

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Andrew O’Hagan’s Bonfire of the Vanities

In real life, the author is the toast of London society, a knowing presence at parties and polo matches. In his new book, he skewers the scene’s hypocrisies. By Anna Russell P.S. Charon, the largest moon of Pluto, was discovered on this day in 1978. In 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft took the first up-close images of the surfaces of these celestial bodies, scientists had a whole host of naming to do. “Now that we’re seeing Pluto for the first time, we have to figure out what to call what we see,” Alexandra Schwartz explained. The “dark, bruise-like area” toward Charon’s north pole was temporarily titled Mordor, “after the hellish part of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.” 🌒

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