[国家地理] 神秘的旅行者

 

As a kid, I encountered eels more often in crossword puzzles or Scrabble (a good way to unload e's) than in the wilds near my Connecticut home. But in the flesh, when my friends and I caught them by mistake on fishing outings, they were alien and weird, unnameable things—snakes, maybe, or what?—and we were afraid to retrieve our hooks from their mouths.

小时候，我经常遇到鳗鱼，不过那是在玩填字游戏或拼字游戏（一种提高成绩的好方法）的时候，不是在康涅狄格州我家附近的荒野。后来，我和朋友们外出钓鱼，无意中钓到活生生的鳗鱼。看着这些陌生而怪异、叫不上名字的东西——也许是蛇，或者其它什么？——我们吓得不敢把鱼钩从它们的嘴上取下来。

One day an old man casting nearby told us they were fish. I knew that if this was true, eels were fish like no others.

有一天，一位在附近钓鱼的老人告诉我们，它们是鱼。我知道，如果它们真是鱼，一定是一种与众不同的鱼。

For much of my life I had little occasion to pay attention to eels. Then six years ago, while heading down Route 17 in the Catskills of New York State on a cold November day, I decided to follow a sign that said, "Delaware Delicacies, Smokehouse." Past the Cobleskill quarry, down a sinuous dirt road through a shadowy hemlock forest, I came to a small tar-paper shack with a silver smokestack, perched on a high bank overlooking the East Branch of the Delaware River. A man with a pointy white beard and a ponytail, who resembled a wood imp, hopped from behind the plywood door of the smokehouse. His name was Ray Turner.

我的前半生很少有机会注意到鳗鱼。后来，在六年前11月一个寒冷的日子，我走在纽约州卡茨基尔17街时，决定按照一个标牌的指示去“特拉华熏制美食”看看。我经过科布斯基尔采石场，沿着一条曲折肮脏的小路穿过黑暗的铁杉树林，来到一个焦油纸搭的小窝棚。带有银色烟囱的窝棚置身于俯瞰德拉瓦河东支流高高的河岸上。一位有着尖尖的白胡子和马尾辫的男人像顽皮的小木偶似的从熏制房胶合板门后跳出来。他名叫雷·特纳。

Every summer when the river is low, Turner—slippery, resilient, and a bit mysterious himself—refurbishes the V-shaped stone walls of a weir that funnels water through a wooden rack designed to trap fish. It takes him the better part of four months to finish the work, in preparation for the eel run that occurs during just two nights in September, around the dark time of the new moon, when maturing eels swim downstream toward the ocean. The run often corresponds with floods brought on by storms during hurricane season, when the sky is at its blackest and the river at its highest. As Rachel Carson observed, the eel is "a lover of darkness."

每年夏天，当河水水位降低时，特纳就开始整修用来拦截游鱼的鱼梁（鱼梁的木架漏掉水，圈住游鱼）V字形石头墙。他自己也很圆滑，适应性很强，还有点神秘。他要花近四个月的时间来完成这项工作，为鳗鱼的洄游做准备。而鳗鱼洄游只发生在九月的两天晚上，那时候，成熟的鳗鱼会借着朔月的黑暗顺流而下，游向大海。飓风季节天空最黑暗，河水水位也最高，洄游往往伴随风暴引发的洪水。正如雷切尔·卡尔森评论的那样，鳗鱼是“黑暗的情人”。

We paddled in a canoe upstream from Turner's house toward the weir. "There's Baldy," he said, pointing to a bald eagle circling low, keeping an eye on the rack, looking to snag any fish before Turner did. In this broad valley, reminiscent of a Hudson River school painting, the weir made an impressive piece of land art. Turner spoke of it in metaphorical terms. "This is the womb," he said, as we perched on the rack. "Those are the legs." He gestured toward the stone breakwaters stretching diagonally on either side of the river. "You see? It's a woman. All the river's life comes here."

我们从特纳家出发，划着独木舟逆流而上，奔向鱼梁。“有秃鹰。”他指着盘旋下来的一只秃鹰。秃鹰一直盯着木架，指望在特纳赶到之前抓住所有的鱼。鱼梁在这个宽阔的峡谷创作了一幅地景艺术作品，给人留下深刻的印象，使人联想到哈德逊河派绘画。特纳用隐喻的词汇谈到它。我们待在木架上时，他说，“这是子宫。”他指向对角延伸到河两岸的石头防浪堤，“这些是腿。”他说， “你知道吗？这是一位女士。河里所有的生命都从这里诞生。”

When the September run is good, Turner can take up to 2,500 eels. "Every year I let the biggest girl back in the river," he said. (Assuming the eel is a female and that she makes it out to sea to spawn, she will lay up to 30 million eggs.) Turner hot smokes his eels and sells them to passersby, as well as to restaurants and retailers, earning him up to $20,000 a year. "I consider the eels to be the best quality protein in my line—a very unique flavor of fish, applewood smoke, and a momentary lingering of dark, fall honey. All the fish I smoke, trout and salmon, are farm raised, except the eels. The eels are wild. They're like free-range."

如果九月洄游的形势不错，特纳能捕涝到2500条鳗鱼。“我每年都让最大的‘女孩’回到河里。”他说。（假如这条鳗鱼是雌性，而且能成功地游到大海产卵，她能产下3000万只卵。）特纳热熏鳗鱼，然后卖给过路人以及餐馆和零售商，每年能挣两万美元。“我认为，在我的行当里，鳗鱼是最优质的蛋白质——一种非常独特的风味鱼，用苹果木烟熏，在暗处晾一会，再抹上秋天的蜂蜜。我熏制的鳟鱼和鲑鱼等所有的鱼都是人工饲养的，只有鳗鱼是野生的。它们像是自然放养的。”

Back at the smokehouse, Turner showed me the two concrete-block chambers where the eels—dressed and brined in salt, brown sugar, and local honey—are hung on rods. Behind each chamber is a 55-gallon-drum stove with a door on the front and a chimney hole with two pipes in the back. Once the fire is going in the stove, Turner directs the heat and smoke into the chamber, and the eels are cooked at 160 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit for a minimum of four hours.

回到熏制室，特纳带我看了两个混凝土块房间，在那里，人们把加工好的鳗鱼浸入盐水、红糖和本地的蜂蜜里，然后吊在木杆上。每个房间后面都有一个55加仑的鼓形炉，前面有一个门，后面有个带两个管道的烟囱洞。 炉火烧着后，特纳把热量和烟引进房间，在华氏160至180的温度中熏制鳗鱼至少四个小时。

He ushered me through the back door, past neat stacks of hand-split applewood, to a wooden tank, like a giant wine cask cut in half, covered in moss and dripping water through its swollen slats. I peered over the chicken wire around the rim into a clear pool. Turner stirred the water with a net, agitating some 500 silvery eels, most about as big around as a dollar coin and up to three feet long. They were lithe and sensuous—just magical.

他带我穿过后门，经过整齐的手劈苹果木柴堆，来到一个木制水池前。水池像一劈两半的大葡萄桶，布满苔藓，膨胀的木板条间滴着水，池边围着铁丝网。我的视线越过铁丝围栏，看着清澈的水池。特纳用一个网搅动池水，惊动了约500条银色鳗鱼。每条鳗鱼都差不多有一美元硬币那么粗，长达三英尺（约0.9144米）。它们敏捷而敏感——实在神奇。

Freshwater eels, of the genus Anguilla, are ancient fishes. They began evolving more than 50 million years ago, branching into 16 species and three subspecies. Most migratory fish, such as salmon and shad, are anadromous, spawning in fresh water and living as adults in salt water. The freshwater eel is one of the few fishes that do the opposite, spawning in the ocean and spending their adulthood in lakes, rivers, and estuaries—a life history known as catadromy. In general, female eels are found upstream in river systems, while males stay in the estuaries. Eels may spend decades in rivers before returning to the ocean to spawn, after which they die. No one has ever been able to witness freshwater eels spawning, and for eel biologists, solving this eel-reproduction mystery remains a kind of holy grail.

鳗鲡属淡水鳗鱼是古鱼类。五千多年前，它们开始进化，扩展到16个种类和3个亚种。大多数迁移鱼类（如鲑鱼和鲱鱼）是溯河产卵种群。它们在淡水产卵，成年后生活在咸水中。淡水鳗鱼是少数几种背道而驰的鱼类，它们在海里产卵，在湖泊河流和河口度过成年时光——那是一段被称为降海洄游的生命历史。一般而言，我们能在上游水系找到雌性鳗鱼，而雄性鳗鱼则呆在河口。鳗鱼在河里也许要生活几十年，然后返回大海产卵，继而死去。从来没有人亲眼见到淡水鳗鱼产卵。对鳗鱼学家来说，鳗鱼神秘的繁殖习惯依然是个难解之谜。

In biology class we were told that the eels we caught in creeks and ponds had emerged from eggs suspended in the ocean, specifically the Sargasso Sea, the southwestern part of the clockwise gyre in the North Atlantic—an idea that required more faith than imagination. We know that freshwater eels reproduce in the ocean because larvae have been found drifting near the surface thousands of miles from any shore. Eel larvae—tiny, transparent creatures with thin heads, bodies shaped like willow leaves, and outward pointing teeth—were thought to be a separate species of fish until 1896, when two Italian biologists watched one in a tank metamorphose into an eel.

我们从生物课上得知，在溪流和池塘中捉到的鳗鱼的卵悬浮于大海，特别是北大西洋顺时针西南部的马尾藻海——接受这个观点更需要信心而不是想像力。我们知道淡水鳗鱼在海里繁殖，因为我们曾经在距所有海岸数千英里的海面发现过漂动的鳗鱼幼体。1896年，两名意大利生物学家在水池中观察到一只鳗鱼幼体蜕变成鳗鱼。在此以前，人们一直认为鳗鱼幼体——一种细小、透明的生物，长着细脑袋和柳树叶似的身体，还有向外突出的牙齿——是独立的物种。

Eels are relentless in their effort to return to their oceanic womb. I can tell you this from personal experience because I've tried to keep them in a home aquarium. The morning after the first night of my attempt, I found eels slither­ing around the floor of my kitchen and living room. After securing a metal screen over the tank with heavy stones, I was able to contain them, but soon they were rubbing themselves raw against the screen. Then one died trying to escape via the filter outflow. When I screened the outflow, eels banged their heads against the glass until they had what appeared to be seizures and died. That's when I stopped trying to keep eels.

鳗鱼重返大海子宫的努力百折不挠。我自己的经历就能说明这一点，因为我曾经尝试把鳗鱼留在一个家庭养池中。尝试着这么做的第一天晚上，我就发现鳗鱼在我家厨房和起居室中到处滑动。我在池上用重石固定住一个金属滤网之后，才把它们控制住。可是，不久，它们就在滤网上把自己蹭的遍体鳞伤。接着，有一条鳗鱼在试图通过滤网器出口逃跑时死了。当我把出口网住后，鳗鱼就砰砰地用头撞玻璃，直到好像是癫痫发作而死。从那以后，我再也不尝试留住鳗鱼了。

They're wondrous in their ability to move. They show up in lakes and ponds and postholes with no visible connection to the sea, leaving the inquisitive shaking their heads. On wet nights eels have been known to cross land from a pond to a river by the thousands, using each other's moist bodies as a bridge. Young eels have been seen climbing moss-covered vertical walls. In New Zealand it's common for cats to bring eels to the doorsteps of farmhouses, having caught them in grassy paddocks.

它们迁移的能力非常奇妙。它们在湖泊池塘和柱坑中现身，又摇头晃脑地离去，根本看不出与海洋的联系。我们曾经获悉，在潮湿的夜晚，数千条鳗鱼结队从池塘出来，以各自湿润和身体为桥梁，穿过陆地，奔向河流。人们曾经看到爬上苔藓覆盖的垂直墙壁的小鳗鱼。在新西兰，猫在长满青草的围场抓住鳗鱼，再带到农场门阶处的情景司空见惯。

"How many animals are there that live in such diverse habitats?" David Doubilet mused while photographing eels in New Zealand, knee-deep in a spring-fed creek, watercress dangling from his mask and snorkel. "Here we have a fish that is born in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean, and yet here you have them in a farm paddock with cows."

“有多少动物生活在如此变化多样的栖息地？”大卫·都必烈若有所思。当时他戴着挂有豆瓣菜的面具和通气管，正在新西兰齐膝深的春季灌溉用溪水中拍摄鳗鱼。“我们有出生在最深最黑暗海洋深处的鱼，而你们的奶牛围场也有这种鱼。”

French farmers in Normandy say that eels will leave rivers on spring nights and find their way to vegetable patches to feed on peas. That's a fable, but eels are one of the only fishes that will emerge from the water to take offerings of food—canned mackerel or dog food—on river­banks. I've observed them doing this at sacred Maori eel-feeding sites in New Zealand. Under normal circumstances, an eel's diet is quite varied—everything from aquatic insects and fish to mussels and other eels.

法国诺曼底的农民说，鳗鱼会在春天的夜里离开河流，为自己找到前往菜地的路，去吃豌豆。那只是个寓言，不过，鳗鱼是唯一会从水中窜出来取走放在河岸上食物产品（罐装鲭鱼或狗食）的鱼。在新西兰，我曾经在专用的毛利人鳗鱼喂养点看到它们取食。正常情况下，鳗鱼的食谱非常丰富——从水生昆虫和鱼到贻贝和其它鳗鱼，什么都吃。

Adaptability aside, the migrations millions of adult eels make from rivers across oceans must be among the greatest unseen journeys of any creature on the planet, spanning thousands of miles. Along the way they face a long list of dangers: hydroelectric dams, river diversions, pollution, disease, predation (by striped bass, beluga whales, and cormorants, among others), and increasingly, fishing by humans. Now, with climate change, another potential disaster looms: shifts in ocean currents that may confound eels during their migrations. Regrettably, although sublime in the eyes of some, the eel is not likely to be the poster child for a conservation movement anytime soon.

且不说它们的适应性，仅仅是数百万条成年鳗鱼跨越数千英里，从河流出发横渡大洋的迁移就肯定是地球上任何生物中最难得一见的旅行。一路上它们要面对一系列危险：水电站大坝、河流改道、污染、疾病、遭遇（多纹鲈、白鲸、特别是鸬鹚）捕食，还有越来越多的人类捕捞。如今，随着气候变化，又隐现出另一种潜在的危险：洋流移位有可能迷惑迁移中鳗鱼。遗憾的是，尽管鳗鱼在某些人看来很崇高，但是它们不可能很快就出现在重点保护之列。

From Aristotle to Pliny the Elder, Izaak Walton to Carl Linnaeus, naturalists put forward various theories as to how eels came to be: that the young emerged from the mud, that eels multiplied by rubbing themselves against rocks, that they were born from a particular dew that falls in May and June, that they bear live young. One problem was that no one could identify sperm or eggs in eels. Over a 40-year period in the late 1700s, at the famous eel fishery at Comacchio, Italy, more than 152 million adult migratory eels were caught and cleaned, not one of which was found carrying eggs. No one could say for sure whether eels even had gender, because no one could identify their reproductive organs. (It turns out that the sex organs of eels become enlarged with eggs and sperm only after the adults leave the mouths of rivers for their oceanic spawning grounds and disappear from sight.)

从亚里士多德到大蒲林尼，从艾萨克·沃尔顿到卡尔·林奈，博物学家推出各种有关鳗鱼如何形成的理论：小鳗鱼从泥中冒出来；通过在岩石上摩擦，鳗鱼越变越多；它们从五月和六月降下的特殊露珠中诞生；它们生下小鳗鱼。问题是，没有人能在鳗鱼体内确认出精子或卵子。1700年代末的四十多年内，人们在意大利科马乔著名的鳗鱼渔场抓住1亿5千2百多条洄游的成年鳗鱼，破膛后，却没有发现一条带卵的鱼。没有人能肯定地说鳗鱼是否有性别，因为没有人能确认它们的生殖器官。（原来，只有在成年鳗鱼离开河口，前往它们的海洋产卵地，从人们的视线中消失以后，鳗鱼的性器官才由卵子和精子扩大。）

In the late 1800s in Trieste, Italy, a medical student named Sigmund Freud was assigned to investigate the testes of the male eel, postulated to be loops of white matter festooning the body cavity. (Freud's paper on eels was his first published work.) This was confirmed in 1897, when a sexually mature male eel was caught in the Strait of Messina.

1800年代末，在意大利的里雅斯特，一位名叫西格蒙德·弗洛伊德的医科学生受命研究雄性鳗鱼的睾丸。他假设鳗鱼睾丸是体腔内结成的白质环。（弗洛伊德有关鳗鱼的论文是他最早出版的作品。）1897年，有人在墨西拿海峡抓住了一条性成熟的雄性鳗鱼，确认了这个理论。

In 1904 Johannes Schmidt, a young Danish oceanographer and biologist, got a job aboard the Thor, a Danish research vessel, studying the breeding habits of food fishes such as cod and herring. One day that spring, a larva of the European eel, Anguilla anguilla, showed up in one of the expedition's trawls west of the Faroe Islands. Was it possible that eels living in the creeks of Denmark spawned way out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?

1904年。年轻的丹麦海洋学家兼生物学家乔纳斯·施密特在丹麦研究船“托尔”号上找到一份工作，研究食用鱼（如鳕鱼和鲱鱼）的繁殖习性。那年春季的一天，法罗群岛西部一艘远征船拖网中出现了一条欧洲鳗鲡幼体。生活在丹麦溪水中的鳗鱼有没有可能在大西洋中部产卵？

A year earlier Schmidt had made what would end up being an auspicious betrothal to the heiress of the Carlsberg Brewery, a Danish company that donated generously to marine research. Outfitted with schooners capable of ocean crossings, he amassed data showing that the farther from the European coast, the smaller the eels. Schmidt asserted that eels must spawn in the southwestern part of the North Atlantic, in the Sargasso Sea. "No other instance is known among fishes of a species requiring a quarter of the circumference of the globe to complete its life history," he wrote in 1923. "Larval migrations of such extent and duration…are altogether unique in the animal kingdom."

一年前，施密特创办了一家为海洋研究慷慨捐赠的丹麦公司，最后幸运地与嘉士伯啤酒厂女继承人订婚。在具有横渡大洋能力的纵帆船的帮助下，他收集到证明离欧洲海岸越远，鳗鱼越小的数据。施密特断言，鳗鱼一定是在北大西洋西南部马尾藻海产卵。“已知鱼类中没有任何其它一种需要跨越地球四分之一路程去完成生命的历程。”1923年，他写道，“如此长的路程，如此长时间的幼体迁移……在动物界中完全是独一无二的。”

After Schmidt's death in 1933, some scientists cast doubt on his Sargasso proposition. They showed that he had concealed certain data to make his case more plausible, and they questioned how he could say with any certainty that this was the only eel breeding ground, since he hadn't witnessed an actual hatching and had barely looked for eels anywhere else. Yet such criticism does little to diminish the profound story of eels he conveyed, which still appears to be true.

1933年，施密特去世后，一些科学家对他的马尾藻命题发出了质疑。他们证明他掩饰了某些数据以使他的案例更可信，他们质问，既然他并没有亲眼看到真正的孵化，只不过是在任何其它地方找不到鳗鱼，他怎么能肯定地说这里是唯一的鳗鱼繁殖地。然而，如此的批评并没有贬抑他讲述的意味深长的鳗鱼故事。他的故事依然像是真实的。

In 1991 an expedition headed by Katsumi Tsukamoto of the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute of the University of Tokyo that included Michael Miller, then a graduate student at the University of Maine, made another breakthrough. On a dark night in the Pacific Ocean west of Guam, the team found hundreds of larvae of the Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica, within days of their hatching, thus locating the spawning area of this species for the first time. Nineteen years later Tsukamoto and Miller are still searching the oceans for spawning eels.

1991年，由东京大学大气和海洋研究所的塚本胜巳领导的远征队（其中有当时是缅因大学研究生的迈克尔·米勒）再次创造了突破性进展。一个漆黑的夜晚，在鳗鱼孵化的日子里，这个团队在关岛西部的太平洋中发现数百条日本鳗鲡幼体，从而首次找出这个物种的产卵区。十九年后，塜本胜巳和米勒仍在海洋中研究产卵的鳗鱼。

When I met Miller in his Tokyo office, he ruefully acknowledged that he and Tsukamoto have come tantalizingly close to finding the parents of Japanese eel hatchlings. But, he said, "you could be 50 meters away and not find anything. It's an issue of scale—the ocean is huge. To get where eels are spawning, it's statistically very low probability. Almost impossible. You'd have to be very lucky." What's more, he added, every year that he and Tsukamoto go looking, they seem to run afoul of the elements. "I can't remember a single eel cruise when there hasn't been a typhoon that's caused us to change course. It's almost like Poseidon is trying to keep the eels secret."

我在东京米勒的办公室见到他时，他沮丧地承认，他和塜本胜巳眼看就要找到新生日本鳗鲡的父母了。可是，他说，“你可能就在50米远处，却什么也找不到。这是比例的问题——海洋太大了。从统计上来说，要找到鳗鱼产卵的地点概率非常低。几乎没有可能。你必须非常幸运。”更重要的是，他补充道，每年他和塜本去找鳗鱼，似乎都要遭遇恶劣天气。“我想不起哪一次鳗鱼巡游是在没有台风的日子，不会让我们改变航向。好像海神波塞冬在努力保守鳗鱼的秘密似的。”

That's the greatest beauty I find in eels: the idea of a creature whose very life beginnings can remain hidden from humans. It makes it all the harder for me to accept the thought that we may lose this creature before its life picture can be completed. Populations of American, European, and Japanese eels are all declining, some precipitously. As John Casselman, a biologist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, told me, "It is truly a crisis. A crisis of concern."

这是我在鳗鱼身上发现的最伟大的美丽之处：能始终向人类隐瞒其生命起源秘密的一种生物的信念。这也使我更难以接受这种想法：在完成它的生命图画之前，我们会失去这种生物。美国、欧洲和日本鳗鱼的种群都在直线减少。安大略省金斯敦皇后大学生物学家约翰·卡斯尔曼告诉我：“这真是一场危机。一场令人担忧的危机。”

In November 2004 two brothers, Doug Watts, a freelance journalist who lives in Augusta, Maine, and Tim Watts, a janitor at a college in Easton, Massachusetts, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to list the American eel, Anguilla rostrata, as a threatened, or even endangered, species. They were motivated by Casselman's documentation of the collapse of eel populations in the upper St. Lawrence River: From the mid-1980s to the middle of the past decade, the number of juveniles there fell by almost 100 percent. The region encompassing the upper St. Lawrence River system and Lake Ontario and its tributaries is North America's largest eel nursery, where it is thought that female eels alone once made up 50 percent of the inshore fish biomass.

2004年11月，住在缅因州奥古斯塔的自由记者道格·瓦茨和马萨诸塞州伊斯顿一所学院的门警蒂姆·瓦茨两兄弟向美国鱼类和野生物管理局递交请愿书，将美洲鳗列为受到威胁，甚至濒临灭绝的物种。他们受到卡斯尔曼有关上圣劳伦斯河中鳗鱼种群猛减文件材料的刺激：自上世纪八十年代中期至过去十年中，那里的鳗鱼苗减少近100%。该地区（包括上圣劳伦斯河水系和安大略湖及其支流）是北美最大的鳗鱼苗圃。据说，仅雌性鳗鱼就曾经组成那里内陆鱼生物量的50%。

One problem for the eels was the earlier construction of the Beauharnois and Moses-Saunders hydroelectric dams, which have blocked their migrations to and from the upper St. Lawrence River system and Lake Ontario. Even if a young eel, aided by fish ladders, succeeds in getting upriver, when she comes downriver as an adult, she may be sucked into a dam's electricity-generating turbines. "Some eels come out with their skin pulled off, like a sock off your foot," Doug Watts told me. The bigger the eel, the greater the danger. In New Zealand, where longfins grow to six feet or more, turbines mean certain death.

这些鳗鱼面对的一个难题是早年博阿努瓦和摩西桑德斯大坝的建设，它阻挡了鳗鱼来往上圣劳伦斯河水系和安大略湖的迁移。一条小鱼即使在帮助鱼类通过水坝的鱼梯帮助下成功地进入上游区域，当她成年后来到下游，也可能会被大坝的发电涡轮机吸进去。“有些逃出来的鳗鱼皮肤脱落，就像你从脚上脱掉了袜子。”道格·瓦茨告诉我。鳗鱼越大越危险。在新西兰，长鳍鱼长到六英尺（约1.83米）或更长，遇到涡轮机是必死无疑。

In February 2007 the FWS announced in a 30-page report that listing American eels under the Endangered Species Act was "not warranted," in part because some eels have been found to spend their whole lives in salty estuaries. "The findings basically said that eels don't need freshwater habitat to survive," Watts said, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "That's like saying bald eagles don't need trees to nest in—they can use telephone poles." Because eels have always been ubiquitous and abundant, Watts says, no one seems to believe they could ever go extinct. "That's what they said about cod as recently as the 1990s, when stocks were collapsing. 'There's no way you can fish out cod—that's insane!' they said." He paused. "You can only beat an animal so hard before it finally just gives up."

2007年2月，固定无线电台在长达30页的报告中宣布，将美国鳗鱼列入美国濒危物种法案“未获批准”，其部分原因是，人们发现有些鳗鱼一生都生活在含盐的河口。“这个发现从根本上说明鳗鱼不需要淡水栖息地也能生存下去。”瓦茨愤怒地甩着手说，“这就好像在说秃鹰不需要树木来筑巢一样——它们可以利用电线杆。”他说，因为鳗鱼一直无处不在产量丰富，似乎没人相信它们能永远灭绝。“就在上世纪九十年代，鳕鱼存量大减的时候，他们就是这么说鳕鱼的。‘根本不可能把鳕鱼捞完——那是荒唐的！’他们说。”他顿了一下，“如此沉重地打击一种动物，只能使它最终放弃。”

Eels that survive dams may not survive Earth's top predator. The international trade, driven largely by Japan's appetite for grilled eel, called kabayaki, is a multibillion-dollar industry. In Japan, eel is believed to increase one's stamina in the heat, and Doyo Ushi No Hi, eel day, usually falls in late July. During that month in 2009 at Tokyo's famed Tsukiji seafood market, more than 111,500 pounds of fresh eel were sold. Eel is almost always eaten in eel-only restaurants, because of the difficulty in cleaning and cooking the fish. It is never served raw: The blood contains a neurotoxin that's neutralized when cooked or hot smoked. (A tiny amount of eel-blood serum injected into a rabbit causes instant convulsions and death.)

从大坝逃生的鳗鱼也许逃不过地球上的顶级掠夺者。主要受日本人对烧烤鳗鱼的食欲驱动的世界贸易是一项数十亿美元的产业。在日本，人们认为加热的鳗鱼能增强人的活力，而“鳗鱼日”一般在七月末到来。2009年的那个月，东京著名的筑地海鲜市场卖掉超过111,500磅（约50575公斤）的鲜鳗鱼。人们几乎总是在鳗鱼专营餐馆吃鳗鱼，因为清洗烹饪这种鱼很困难。餐馆从不供应未加工的鳗鱼，因为鱼血中含有一种神经毒素，经过烹饪或热熏后才会失效。（极少的一点鳗鱼血清注射进兔子体内，能瞬间导致其抽搐死亡。）

The eel is grilled on bamboo skewers over a hot wood fire, repeatedly dipped in water, and returned to the fire to steam the meat. Then it's glazed with a sauce of soy, mirin (sweet rice wine), and sugar and sprinkled with sansho, mountain pepper. This dish, most often a single eel split and splayed over a bed of rice in a black, lacquered box with a red interior, is called unaju. No part of the fish goes to waste. The liver is served in a soup, and the spine is deep-fried and eaten like a cracker. Though it may be part of Japan's food folklore, it is said that in Tokyo the eel is filleted along the back to avoid mimicking the samurai warrior's ritual knife-in-the-belly suicide. In Kyoto, where there were fewer samurai, it is filleted along the belly. Kyoto people say that the women in their city have such beautiful skin because they eat plenty of eel. Indeed, the meat is high in vitamins A and E, and because of its high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids, it has been found to help prevent type 2 diabetes.

烧烤鳗鱼是将鳗鱼穿在竹签上放在热木火上烤，反复浸水，再放回火上，烤掉肉中的水汽。然后用黄豆调味汁、味淋（甜米酒）和糖上色，再撒上山椒和山胡椒。这道菜，通常是把一条鱼劈开，放在铺着米的黑色喷漆盒里（里面是红色），被称为 “unaju”。这种鱼一点也不会被浪费。肝脏入汤，油炸透的脊骨可以当饼干吃。虽然也许只是日本食品的民间风俗，但据说东京人从后背片开鳗鱼是为忌讳武士切腹自杀的仪式。京都的武士很少，因此那里是从鱼肚片开鳗鱼。京都人说，他们城市的女人有这么漂亮的肤色就是因为她们吃了很多鳗鱼。确实，鳗鱼肉富含维生素A和E，而且因为它含有高浓度的欧米茄-3脂肪酸，人们发现它还有助于预防II型糖尿病。

An eel served in a restaurant in Manhattan may have hatched in the Atlantic Ocean, been netted in a river mouth in the Basque region of France, flown to Hong Kong, raised at a farm in nearby Fujian or Guangdong Provinces, cleaned, grilled, and packaged in factories near the farms, and finally flown to New York City. Readying eels for market usually involves catching babies—called glass eels because of their transparency—when they arrive in fresh water from the ocean and shipping them to warehouse-style farms in China for fattening up. The trade remains dependent on the capture of wild fish because no one has figured out how to reproduce eels profitably in captivity.

曼哈顿的餐馆供应的鳗鱼也许是在大西洋里孵化，在法国巴斯克区的河口被网住，再空运到香港，在福建或广东省附近的养殖农场饲养、加工、烧烤，然后在农场附近的工厂包装，最后空运到纽约市。为市场准备好鳗鱼通常包括在鱼苗从大海游到淡水水域时，捕捉幼苗——被称为玻璃鳗鱼，因为它们是透明的——然后船运到中国仓储式农场养肥。这项贸易始终取决于野生鱼苗的捕捞，因为谁也没办法人工饲养繁殖这些有利可图的鳗鱼。

In the U.S. during the 1970s, when aquaculture farms were burgeoning in China, eel fishing to supply the Asian market went on pell-mell from January through June in every East Coast state. Pat Bryant of Nobleboro, Maine, was one of the first in the state to catch glass eels for export to China. By day she ran a hairdressing salon in the coastal town of Damariscotta, and at night, to make a little extra money, she went down to the mouth of the Pemaquid River to check her nets.

上世纪七十年代，在中国水产养殖业蓬勃发展的时候，从1月到6月，美国东海岸各州一直忙着捕捞鳗鱼，供应亚洲市场。缅因州诺布尔伯勒的帕特·布赖恩特是这个州最先捕捞玻璃鳗鱼出口中国的人之一。白天，她在沿海城市达马里斯科塔经营一家发廊，晚上，为了挣笔外快，她到佩马奎德河口去检查撒下的网。

The commercial operation in Maine grew explosively from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, when the more than 1,500 fishers with permits could each make several thousand dollars a night at the dock for their catch. People began stealing and vandalizing nets and pulling .357 Magnums to stake out or preserve fishing territories. In one creek, fishermen had a net called the green monster. "It went clear across the river," Bryant said in her raspy voice, ashing her cigarette in a scallop shell. "It was a goddamn fiasco." She and a few others appealed to the state, "just out of our own preservation." Today the allowable eel take in Maine—the state with the most active fishery—is restricted to a few locations and a short season, from March 22 to May 31.

自上世纪八十年代中期至九十年代中期，缅因州的这项商业运作爆炸式发展，当时，取得许可证的1500多渔民，每人一晚上就能捕到能挣数千美元的鱼苗。人们开始偷盗或损坏别人的鱼网，拖着357口径马格南枪监视或保护捕捞区。在一条小溪中，渔民们捞了一网所谓的“绿色怪物”。“整条河都清干净了。”布赖特在一个扇贝壳里弹着烟灰粗声粗气地说，“这是一次该死的惨败。”她和其他人一起向州政府呼吁，“简直失去了我们自己的保护。”今天，渔业最兴旺的缅因州只允许在几个地点和很短的季节内（从3月22日至5月31日）捕捞鳗鱼。

In 1997 record-low catches of prized Japanese glass eels sent prices soaring—a single kilo (2.2 pounds), about 5,000 of them, sold for as much as $16,500, making eel more valuable at the time than gold. When the supply of Japanese glass eels crashed, the price for American glass eels briefly increased tenfold—the eel gold rush, as Bryant calls it. Japanese connoisseurs weren't happy. "American eels are not as tasty," Shoichiro Kubota, who runs a 120-year-old eel restaurant in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, told me. (His father was eel handler to Emperor Hirohito.) "Even the French eels are not as good—like American cherries. Not as tasty. We like our native things."

1997年，珍贵的日本玻璃鳗鱼捕获量创最低纪录，使鱼苗价格飙升——一公斤(约5000条)售价高达16,500美元，使当时的鳗鱼比黄金还昂贵。当日本玻璃鳗鱼供不应求的时候，美国玻璃鳗鱼的价格在短期内上涨了十倍——布赖特称之为鳗鱼淘金热。日本的行家不开心了。“美国鳗鱼的味道不那么好。”在东京秋叶原区经营一家有120年历史的鳗鱼餐馆的久保田章一郞告诉我。（他父亲是裕仁天皇的鳗鱼厨师）“就连法国鳗鱼的味道也没那么好——就像美国草莓似的，不好吃。我们喜欢我们本土的东西。”

Bryant buys glass eels from fishermen up and down the Maine coast and babysits them in tanks near her home until they're ready for shipment from Boston to Hong Kong, live, in plastic bags filled with oxygenated water and packed in foam containers. Until recently, Jonathan Yang, a dealer from Taiwan, was the middleman between Bryant and eel farmers in China and Taiwan, buying eels from her by the kilo and selling them by the piece, or individual eel. He paid cash, typically wiring a million dollars to a bank in Maine at the end of the season.

布赖特从往来于缅因州沿岸的渔民手中购买玻璃鳗鱼，把它们临时养在她家附近的水池里，精心照看，直到能把它们从波士顿船运到香港。她把活鳗鱼装在充满氧化水的塑料袋里，再装进泡沫集装箱。直到最近，台湾商人乔纳森·杨都是布赖特和中国大陆及台湾鳗鱼养殖者的中间人。他从布赖特那里按公斤买入，再按件或按条卖出。他付现金，到季末，一般要向缅因州的银行汇入一百万美元。

When the selling was good, Yang doubled his money, but more often than not he had to accept a modest profit. "This is a very big business, very risky," he said. If the price for adult eels fell during the 14 to 18 months it took to raise a glass eel for market, his Chinese buyer could go bankrupt. "One year the farm sells high—they all drive Mercedes-Benzes," Yang said. "Next year price falls—they're riding bicycles."

销量好的时候，杨会付双倍的款，但通常情况下，他必须接受适度的利润。“这笔生意很大，风险也很大。”他说。如果成熟鳗鱼的价格在14至18个月内跌落，导致供应市场的玻璃鳗鱼价格上扬，他的中国买主可能就会破产。“养殖场销售量大的一年，他们都开上了梅赛德斯-奔驰。”杨说，“第二年，价格跌落，他们就骑自行车了。”

Before he went into eels, Yang was in the lucra­tive business of selling shark fins in China for soup. He says he quit when he saw dolphins, caught accidentally on longline hooks, being dragged aboard ship, beaten to death, and thrown back into the sea. "When they take the dolphins on the ship," Yang said, "you know they're weeping—you can see the tears." He put his hand over his heart. "When I look at eels, I feel good. When they move, they look very nice."

在从事鳗鱼销售之前，杨在中国经营着做汤的鱼翅生意。他说，当他看到长线鱼钩意外捞到海豚，人们把它们拖上船，打死，又给扔到海里时，他不干了。杨说，“当他们把海豚拖上船时，你知道它们在哭泣——你能看到眼泪。”他用手捂着心口，“看到鳗鱼时，我感觉很好。它们滑动的时候，看起来很可爱。”

Like Jonathan Yang, I get a good feeling from eels. The times I've spent with them, especially during the fall migration, have pulsed with energy. Standing in Ray Turner's weir on a cool September night on the eve of the new moon, watching veinlike ropes of eels fill his womb of wood and stone, I could almost believe the Maori's yarns about encounters they've had with the taniwha—the water guardian or monster. For many indigenous people throughout the Polynesian Islands, the eel is a god that replaces the arche­typal snake in creation myths, an important source of food, and an erotic symbol—the word many islanders use for eel, tuna, is synonymous with "penis." In one Maori myth, eels come from the sky, having fallen when the heavens became too hot and inhospitable for them. On Earth, some Maori say, the movements of eels make the rivers flow. The eel is integral to everything.

我像乔纳森·杨一样，从鳗鱼那里获得了良好的感觉。和它们相处的时候，尤其是在秋季迁移期间，我感到充满活力。在寒冷的九月深夜，朔月的前夜，我站在雷·特纳的鱼梁里，看着一连串脉状鳗鱼装满他那由木头和石头组成的子宫，我几乎相信了毛利人的故事：他们曾经偶遇坦尼华——水神或水怪。对波利尼西亚群岛的许多土著人来说，鳗鱼是创世神话中取代原型蛇的神，是食物的重要来源，也是性爱的象征——许多岛民的用语中，鳗鱼、金枪鱼和“阳物”同义。

We allow ourselves to believe we can under­stand nature by organizing and explaining it through systems of taxonomy and computerized studies of genes and DNA, fitting everything into neat categories. With each passing year, researchers peer deeper into the hidden lives of eels; in 2006 and again in 2008, scientists released adult eels from the west coasts of Ireland and France outfitted with pop-up tags, hoping to track them to the Sargasso Sea. But "knowledge," as we amass it (ever available, at our fingertips), can hinder imagination and the wonder that can come from our own observation. Eels—with their simplicity of form, their preference for darkness, their gracefulness—have helped me embrace the unnameable and get to the essence of experience, that which cannot be cataloged or quantified. They have been my way back.

我们让自己相信，通过分类学系统和基因以及DNA的电脑研究整理并解释自然，我们能够了解自然，使一切都与整齐的分类相符。每过一年，研究人员都更进一步地深入鳗鱼隐秘的生活。在2006年，以及2008年，科学家们从爱尔兰和法国西海岸放走了装上弹出式标签的鳗鱼，希望跟踪它们到马尾藻海。但是我们积累的“知识”（永远随手可得）也有可能阻碍我们的想像力，掩藏我们有可能自己观察到的奇迹。鳗鱼——以及它们朴素的形状、它们对黑暗的偏爱、它们的优雅姿态——帮助我接受了这种不可名状，并接触到无法分类或量化的经验本质。它们是吸引我回来的原因。

The immense pressures on eels today will test their ability to adapt and survive. A Maori bush guide named Daniel Joe spoke of the staying power of eels as we sat by a campfire on the Waipunga River. "He's an old fish, and he's absolutely relentless," Joe said. "The eel is morehu," a survivor. "I think they will be there till the end of the world as we know it."

如今我们向鳗鱼施加的巨大压力将检验它们的适应和生存能力。坐在怀普加河旁的营火边，一位名叫丹尼尔·乔的毛利丛林向导谈到鳗鱼的钢性力量。“他是一种古老的鱼，他绝对百折不挠。”乔说，“鳗鱼是‘morehu’，一个幸存者。我认为它们会一直生活在那里，直到众所周知的世界末日来临。”

I hope he's right.

我希望他是对的。

1.Year-old "glass" eels hole up in Maine's Pemaquid River.

1.一岁大的“玻璃”鳗鱼躲藏在缅因州的佩马奎德河里。

2.At dusk, lights guide Yvonne Carey (left) and daughter Genna as they dip eels from Nova Scotia's East River and store them in a blue-topped bag. Licensed to fish nine rivers, the Careys truck their catch home to holding tanks to await live shipment to Asia.

2.傍晚，在手电筒灯光引导下，伊冯·加里（左）和女儿珍纳从新斯科舍东河中舀取鳗鱼，装在顶端蓝色的袋子里。加里获得在九条河里捕鱼的许可，他用卡车把捕获物运回家，养在水池里，等着把活鱼装船运往亚洲。

3.Yoshiaki Miyamoto hooked just one eel on his morning stint on Lake Biwa, near Kyoto. The Japanese believe eels boost energy and cool the blood in summer; local stocks are in decline.

3.京都附近琵琶湖，宫本义明早上出海钓到一条鳗鱼。日本人相信鳗鱼能提高精力，还能在夏天降温。不过，当地鳗鱼储量正在下降。

4.New Zealand's longfin eels are giants, some topping six feet and 80 pounds, that can live for decades. Traditional Maori prize them as guardians of sacred spaces—and as dinner. These females at South Island's Willowbank Wildlife Reserve could be 30 years old.

4.新西兰长鳍鳗鱼是巨人，有一些长达六英尺（约1.83米）重达80磅（约36.29公斤），能活几十年。传统的毛利人把它们尊为神圣空间的监护人——也当晚餐。柳岸野生动物保护区南岛的这些雌性鳗鱼可能已经有三十岁了。

5.Black eyes and red hearts dot glass eels scooped into a tank from Maine's Damariscotta River. This batch, worth some $400 a pound, is bound for China. Eeling in the U.S. is heavily regulated; Maine is one of the few states allowing the export of glass eels.

5.从缅因州的达马瑞斯哥塔湖中把有黑眼睛和红心点的玻璃鳗鱼舀进水槽。这一批是运往中国的，价值约每磅（约0.45公斤）400美元。在美国捕捞鳗鱼受到严格监管。缅因州是少有的几个获准出口玻璃鳗鱼的州之一。

6.Eels cook over a beech and oak fire at Dutchman Alex Koelewijn's smokehouse. They melt in your mouth like fine chocolate, he says. "It's the oily and smoky taste that gives the most joy."

6.荷兰人亚历克斯·科勒维恩在熏制室山毛榉和橡木火上烧烤鳗鱼。烤好的鳗鱼吃到嘴里有种优质巧克力的味道，他说，“最让人喜欢的是它的油性和烟熏味道。”

7.A weeks-old eel larva in a petri dish glows under blue light. In a recent breakthrough, Japanese scientists raised eels hatched in the lab until they spawned. Though there is much still to learn, captive breeding could someday give wild stocks a reprieve.

7.培养皿中一周大的鳗鱼苗在蓝色灯光下发光。最近，日本科学家突破性地养大在实验室中孵化的鳗鱼，直到它们产孵。虽然需要了解的事情还很多，但是，总有一天，人工繁殖能够暂时缓解野生鱼苗储量的减少。

8.Eels are slaughtered at a processing shop in a Tokyo suburb that sells the butchered fish to retailers across the country.

8.东京郊区一个加工厂向全国各地零售商销售剖割好的鱼。图为工人们在宰杀鳗鱼。

9.The eyes of eels grow larger for their final journey to their spawning grounds, enhancing their vision. A fisherman pulled this eel, likely a female, from the St. Lawrence River as she slipped downstream toward the Atlantic Ocean.

9.为奔向它们的产孵地而开始最后的旅行时，鳗鱼的眼睛会变大，提高了它们的视野。这条鳗鱼可能是雌性。在它顺流而下游向大西洋时，一名渔民从圣劳伦斯河中把她拖了上来。

10.Fisherman Ray Turner hand-built the V-shaped stone overflow dam, or weir, in the East Branch of the Delaware River in New York; its walls funnel eels into a wooden collecting rack. Turner inherited the right to fish at this spot from his father.

10.渔民雷·特纳在纽约德拉瓦河东支流手工建造了这个V字形石头溢流堰，或称鱼梁。从它的墙壁漏过的鳗鱼进入木制的收集架内。特纳从父亲那里继承了在这个地点捕鱼的权利。

11.Early arrivals—Ray Turner calls them vanguard eels—wash into his trap at the start of the eel run, two nights in late September when large numbers migrate downstream. In that time Turner hopes to catch thousands of the slippery fish for his smokehouse business in the New York Catskills.

11.9月末的两天深夜，大批鳗鱼迁徙者顺流而下。这些早期到访者——雷·特纳称它们为先锋鳗鱼——冲进他的陷阱。那个时候，特纳希望为他在纽约卡茨基尔的熏制房生意捉到数千条狡猾的鳗鱼。

12.Linguini-like glass eels gave photographer David Doubilet a taste for his subject. In San Sebastián, Spain, he bought two pounds of them for $450 to share with friends. "They're cooked very fast in olive oil and garlic," he says. "You have to eat them with a wooden fork, because a metal one will get too hot and burn your tongue."

12.扁面条似的玻璃鳗鱼让摄影师大卫·都比烈特尝到了拍摄对象的滋味。在西班牙圣塞瓦斯蒂安，他以450美元买了两磅（约0.9公斤）鳗鱼和朋友分享。他说，它们在橄榄油和大蒜中快速烧熟。你必须用木叉来吃鳗鱼，因为金属叉会变得太烫，灼伤你的舌头。”

13."Eels aren't very fast, but they can swim forever," says Guido van den Thillart, an animal physiologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who is measuring the speed of this captive fish. Adult females use stored fat so efficiently that they can cross the Atlantic Ocean without resting—a journey of six months or more—and produce millions of eggs along the way.

13.“鳗鱼的速度并不特别快，但是它们能永远游动。”吉多·冯·丹·希莱特说。他是荷兰莱顿大学动物生理学家，正在测量这条被捉鱼的速度。成年鳗鱼能充分利用储存的脂肪，一气不停地穿越大西洋——那是六个月或更长时间的旅行——一路上产下数百万颗卵。

14.Honsa Olafson's 900-foot-long conical net snags a mess of eels in the Baltic Sea. In Sweden the fish are grilled, smoked, fried, roasted, or dropped into soup for the autumn eel party, a centuries-old tradition on the Skåne coast in the south. One good excuse for serving schnapps, vodka, and beer at the event: Swedes believe alcohol aids in digesting the fatty fish.

14.洪萨·奥拉夫森900英尺（约274.32米）长的锥形网在波罗的海网住一大群鳗鱼。在瑞典，人们烧烤、熏制、油炸、烘烤鳗鱼或把它们放进为秋季鳗鱼派对准备的汤里，这是南部的斯科纳海岸有着数百年历史的传统。鳗鱼是在活动中上杜松子酒、伏特加和啤酒的一个好借口：瑞典人认为烈性酒有助于消化多脂的鱼。