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Eel Project

This note is about a project with eels as the key stakeholder.

Cf.

  • previous project iterations
  • topical notes:
  • related concepts:
    • biopolitics
    • Anthropocene
    • biosphere, noosphere, technosphere
    • Earth system governance, planetary governance
    • critical ecology, ecocriticism
    • environmental studies
    • Critical Life Studies, book series by Columbia University Press
    • biocivilisations
    • Politics, Political Ontology
    • riverhood
    • hydrosocial geographies
    • witnessing
    • reenactment 1 and reenactment studies 2

Open Questions and Research Briefs

Capabilities Mapping for Eels

Use the Transpositiones study as a starting model.22 Extend its past-present-future comparisons through plural, situated capability accounts, each shaped by its contributors, methods and horizons.

  • Account-makers: Trace contributions from fishers, traditional communities, Indigenous communities, scientists across disciplines, enthusiasts, eels themselves and other living beings. Record how methods, models, cultural aggregations and communities of practice shape each account. Ask who selects capability indicators, by what process and according to whose values.25 Distinguish eel activity from human interpretations of it.
  • Scales and horizons: Specify each account's spatial, temporal and organisational scales, from individual eels to collectives or institutions. Record perceptual access alongside cognitive light cones (Private), the spatial and temporal reach of goals agents can pursue.26
  • Life-history architecture: Link spawning, larval development, glass-eel recruitment, elver growth, yellow-eel residence, silvering and spawning migration through species-specific trajectories.23 Include freshwater, estuarine and coastal pathways. Map opportunities to complete transitions, with their conditions, risks, delays and dependencies.
  • Baseline: Develop revisable capability lists for each stage or habitat from evolutionary, ecological, historical and cultural evidence. Attribute each baseline to its account-makers, including their criteria for thriving.
  • Present: Document how eels express capabilities across species, local groups, sex, life stage, individual and habitat. Record how cues, associations, barriers and other stressors affect their trajectories.
  • Connectivity: Map corridors, bottlenecks, refuges, staging areas and oceanic routes. Trace dependencies across distant habitats, including the relations and infrastructures that sustain or interrupt them.
  • Future: Compare management trajectories with design possibilities for supporting capabilities throughout the life cycle. Map approximate likelihoods, cumulative effects, time lags and uncertainty. Ask whose criteria guide each intervention.
  • Transfer: Compare eel-human relations across rivers, wetlands, estuaries, coasts and the open ocean. Test how design goals change with species, life stage, place, cultural context or governance system.24 Record what local meanings comparison or aggregation preserves, changes or obscures.27
  • Evidence: Link every capability claim to its account-makers, methods, sources, assumptions and confidence. Distinguish disputed interpretations from missing evidence in supplementary tables. Use both to generate testable hypotheses.
  • Plurality and implications: Map where accounts overlap, nest or contradict one another, including within communities. Record whose accounts influence decisions about coexistence or co-governance. Cf. Capabilities.
  • Just-in-caseness: Explore the parallel with agile or just-in-time decision-making. Study how agents make imperfect, provisional decisions with limited knowledge, time, energy and options.28 Assess how decision strategies fit local conditions.29 Apply this to eel activity as well as capability-account construction. Cf. Redundancy.
  • Decision context: Record who must act, by when, using what information or resources, with which consequences for others. Specify what feedback would prompt revision of the decision or its capability account.

Approaches to History

  • geospatial analysis including historical GIS
  • Historical Ecology
  • Environmental History
  • forensic architecture
  • forensic ecologies 3, 4, 5 The typical way to understand "forensic ecology" is as a way to produce evidence to support legal cases about human crimes.
  • sentinels of the environment 6
  • historical reconstructions of environments and events using archaeological and historical data
  • data journalism
  • reconstruction design, reconstructing historical buildings, artefacts, technology such as boats physically and putting them into action to verify the extend and characteristics of their functionality. Digital reconstruction for visualisation, analysis, and interactive engagement
  • HBIM, historical building information modelling
  • reconstruction of paleo-environments, paleo-climates, paleo-ecologies, paleopedology for example reconstruction of geomorphology or hominin landscapes
  • reconstruction of tectonic movements, sea levels, and other geological events
  • alternative histories, for example in artificial life experiments, Dawkins's experiments, simulations of alternative scenarios of extinction events, etc.

Approaches to history and uses or history are different in different fields such as ecology, heritage, design, humanities, social sciences, Indigenous studies, food studies, and more.

Objectives:

  • merge anthropocentric and other histories
  • extend the histories into deep past
  • reconsider histories as parts of present and future
  • expand histories to include disempowered and non-human agents
  • use histories as a source of inspiration and workable examples for the design of the future

Methods

  • anticipatory ethnography, anthropology of the future

Pink, Sarah. “Futures Anthropology for the Polycrisis.” Anthropological Forum, 2025, 1–18. https://doi.org/10/hbcw3d.

Voorst, Roanne van. “Futures Thinking as Collaborative Practice in Anthropology.” Anthropology Today 41, no. 2 (2025): 15–19. https://doi.org/10/hbcv5c.

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RCA: River Co-Learning Arenas

Souza, Daniele Tubino de, Lena Hommes, Arjen Wals, Jaime Hoogesteger, Rutgerd Boelens, Bibiana Duarte-Abadía, Juan Pablo Hidalgo-Bastidas, et al. “River Co-Learning Arenas: Principles and Practices for Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-Creation and Multi-Scalar (Inter)Action.” Local Environment 30, no. 1 (2025): 58–80. https://doi.org/10/hbczbb.

Data Collection

  • Collect GIS, lidar, drone/photography and photogrammetry data, multi-spectral imaging, and environmental sensor data to capture current conditions and states, characteristics of Anguillid eel habitats.
  • Collect sensory data to capture/represent eel Umwelten (the lived experiences and interactions of eels within their habitats), including water temperature, flow, turbidity, and chemical composition, as well as acoustic and olfactory cues relevant to eel behaviour and ecology, patterns of eel communication, constructive behaviours and traces of their presence in the environment, eel movements, and interactions with other species, eel interactions with artificial and urban structures or behaviours in novel/anthropogenic environments. Cf. soundmapping of rives and seas.

Umwelt

The project promises "deep maps". Can we build the maps according to eels?

Visual Perception

To come...

Olfactory Perception

To come...

Bioacoustics

Use the eel Umwelt as the organising frame for bioacoustics. Ask what composes an eel's acoustic world, how the eel senses and responds to it, and whether the eel contributes sounds of its own, for example in communication, memory, or navigation.

Map this acoustic Umwelt through three provisional lenses. Test this structure empirically:

  1. The soundscapes around eels.
  2. What eels hear and how they respond.
  3. What eels produce, if they produce communicative sounds.
The Soundscapes Around Eels

Soundscape research can distinguish biophony, geophony, and anthrophony. Record the sounds of other organisms, water and sediment, and human infrastructure across the habitats that eels use.7

Establish and represent soundscapes for eels and other aquatic organisms across rivers, lakes, wetlands, estuaries, continental shelves, and the open ocean. Record relatively undisturbed and anthropogenic conditions, then compare and share the results through long-term hydrophone recordings, participatory workshops, public sound maps, and creative work.8, 9 River recordings should also track spatial variation, since turbulence, sediment transport, flow level, and channel form produce different soundscapes along a river segment.10 Use these materials for horizon scanning and to expand design potential.

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Sonic mapping and impact-account approach from Duarte et al.7 Check how this approach applies to freshwater systems.

Ocean paperFreshwater equivalent
Biophonyfish, insects, amphibians, birds, mammals
Geophonyflow turbulence, rain, waterfalls, sediment transport
Anthrophonyroads, dams, boats, pumps, hydropower, mining

Can we draw an acoustic equivalent of the eel's Umwelt across its full life history? The map should connect changing habitats with changing acoustic conditions, sensory possibilities, risks, and relations with other beings.

Mountain Stream ↓ Lowland River ↓ Wetland ↓ Estuary ↓ Continental Shelf ↓ Open Ocean

Historic River

Biophony:

  • Frogs
  • Aquatic insects
  • Fish choruses
  • Waterbirds

Geophony:

  • Flow
  • Rain
  • Floods
  • Sediment

Anthrophony:

  • Minimal
Anthropocene River

  • Hydropower turbines

  • Road crossings

  • Pumps

  • Agricultural machinery

  • Urban runoff systems

  • Motorboats

  • Reduced fish abundance

  • Reduced insect abundance

  • Fragmented migration routes

Eel-Led Future
  • Restored connectivity
  • Reduced turbine mortality
  • Indigenous water management
  • Revived wetland habitats
  • Recovering biophony
What Eels Hear

European eels hear low-frequency sound primarily through particle motion. Their upper audible limit is about 300 Hz, and the swimbladder improves sensitivity at higher frequencies within that range.11 This provides a starting point for mapping the acoustic conditions that matter to eels, but hearing thresholds alone do not show which sounds guide, disturb, attract, or repel them.

Behavioural studies provide the next layer. Anthropogenic noise can compromise antipredator behaviour in European eels.12 Japanese eel elvers also show greater avoidance of a noise source as sound pressure increases.13 Other studies have tested infrasound as a deterrent or guidance cue during downstream migration.14, 15 Recent reviews suggest that sound alone may fail to guide eels reliably, while multimodal systems that combine sound or light with physical barriers appear more promising.16 The project should therefore treat acoustic guidance as a research question rather than an established design method.17

Questions for this lens:

  • Which frequencies and sound pressures do eels detect in different life stages?
  • Do responses vary between upstream and downstream movement, feeding, sheltering, and migration?
  • How do flow, depth, temperature, salinity, turbidity, and the distance from a sound source alter what eels receive?
  • Which sounds produce avoidance, attraction, habituation, stress, or no detectable response?
What Eels Produce

Are anguillid eels sonorous? The evidence remains thin. Researchers recorded sounds in salt marshes and attributed them to European eels, while an older survey claimed sound production among American and European eels.18, 19 A controlled study of Anguilla bicolor found acoustic differences associated with feeding and eel phase, but linked the sounds to swimming movements rather than demonstrated vocalisations.20 The National Park Service also reports that American eels produce sounds here.

The first task is therefore classificatory. Pair hydrophone recordings with video, movement tracking, feeding observations, and environmental measurements. Test whether eels produce recurring signals through body movement, feeding, respiration, interaction, or a specialised sound-producing mechanism. Field recordings could then test whether the same signals occur in rivers, wetlands, estuaries, and marine habitats, and whether other eels respond to them.

This lens should remain open to a negative result. Eels may produce detectable sounds without using them for communication, or they may communicate through modalities that sound-based methods cannot capture. The project can still make a contribution by separating eel-produced sounds from the larger soundscapes in which eels hear and move.

For background on fish bioacoustics, see this special issue.

Tactile Perception

To come...

Electroreception

To come...

Magnetoreception

Hypothesis: temperate anguillid eels imprint on geomagnetic gradients during larval drift and later retrace those gradients as spawning adults.21

This is interesting because:

  • No adult eel has previously migrated to the spawning ground.
  • Each generation appears capable of finding the same region.
  • The information is not transmitted socially by older individuals.

If the hypothesis is correct, the "memory" exists as a combination of:

  • Developmental imprinting,
  • Individual retention,
  • Species-specific sensory capacities,

rather than cultural transmission.

People

  • Malcolm S. Johnson, arts-science communicator on the biocultural histories of freshwater eels, Tasmania, Australia
  • Andrew Kerr, Chairman at Sustainable Eel Group, UK
  • Osborne Ben, President at Victorian Eel Fishermans Association

Australian Indigenous Connections

Iuk Eel Season, see Eastern Kulin Seasonal Calendar

"Journey of the eel February and March were the months of the wygabil-ny-ewin (eel season) when female eels begin their long journey down the Birrarung (Yarra) River to Nairm (Port Phillip Bay). The return of the eels in Pareip (Spring) was celebrated through dances and celebrations."

...

"Harvesting Food at Tromgin. Eels were a staple food hunted by the Kulin. The Eel Bridge over the ornamental lake at the Royal Botanic Gardens celebrates its bountiful eel population. Chief Protector George Robinson had an office in the former mission station beside Tromgin. In January 1841 he recorded and sketched Boon Wurrung men catching eels. ‘This afternoon two native blacks of the Boongerong tribe – Niggerernaul and a lad named Dol.ler – came to my office and went to the lagoon about a quarter of a mile distant in the paddock and in a very short time caught about forty pounds of eel. I saw them catching or rather spearing them at which they are very expert. Their mode is as follows: they each had two spears called by them 1. toke.in, 2. yoke.wil.loke. The eels they call yoe.hoke. Bet Banger is father to Dol.ler. Having the two spears grasped by the right hand thus, they go in to the water and keep walking about, at the same time jabbing their spears into the mud in a sloping direction before them. If they jab in their spear which is ascertained by their feet they turn it up on the end of the spear, the second spear is jabbed into it whilst he lifts holds it down and thus kills it. If not quite dead they bite the head and throw it on shore. I bought some of the eels, twenty, and two spears made thus: half an inch stick. Wire size of that used round the rim of saucepan, it is called yoke.wil.’"

Eidelson, Meyer. Melbourne Dreaming: A Guide to Important Places of the Past and Present. 1997. Expanded. Melbourne: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2014.

Cf. eel trap bridge in Melbourne

References

Peterson, Jesse D. 2024. “Ethical Challenges in Mariculture: Adopting a Feminist Blue Humanities Approach.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 37 (1): 3. https://doi.org/10/g9xg2j.

Voorst, Roanne van. “Futures Thinking as Collaborative Practice in Anthropology.” Anthropology Today 41, no. 2 (2025): 15–19. https://doi.org/10/hbcv5c.

Subnotes
  1. Reading List

Footnotes

  1. Agnew, Vanessa. “Introduction: What Is Reenactment?” Criticism 46, no. 3 (2004): 327–39. https://doi.org/10/cbn4d6.˄

  2. Agnew, Vanessa, Jonathan Lamb, and Juliane Tomane, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field. London: Routledge, 2020.˄

  3. Parker, Dan, Kylie Soanes, and Stanislav Roudavski. “Interspecies Cultures and Future Design.” Transpositiones 1, no. 1 (2022): 183–236. https://doi.org/10/gpvsfs.˄

  4. Yap, Mandy, and Eunice Yu. “Operationalising the Capability Approach: Developing Culturally Relevant Indicators of Indigenous Wellbeing: An Australian Example.” Oxford Development Studies 44, no. 3 (2016): 315–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600818.2016.1178223.˄

  5. Levin, Michael. “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds.” Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 16 (2022): 768201. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201.˄

  6. Righton, David, Pieterjan Verhelst, and Håkan Westerberg. “The Blueprint of the European Eel Life Cycle: Does Life-History Strategy Undermine or Provide Hope for Population Recovery?” Fish and Fisheries 26, no. 4 (2025): 505–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12894.˄

  7. Gansworth, Kristi Leora, and Christopher H. Bowser. “An Anguillid Lens: How Eels Reconnect People and Waterways.” Frontiers in Human Dynamics 5 (2024): 1270644. https://doi.org/10/g3xfxw.˄

  8. Sterling, Eleanor J., Christopher Filardi, Anne Toomey, Amanda Sigouin, Erin Betley, Nadav Gazit, Jennifer Newell, et al. “Biocultural Approaches to Well-Being and Sustainability Indicators Across Scales.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, no. 12 (2017): 1798–806. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0349-6.˄

  9. Budaev, Sergey, Christian Jørgensen, Marc Mangel, Sigrunn Eliassen, and Jarl Giske. ‘Decision-Making From the Animal Perspective: Bridging Ecology and Subjective Cognition’. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7 (2019). https://doi.org/10/gp4tvv.˄

  10. Todd, Peter M., and Gerd Gigerenzer. “Environments That Make Us Smart: Ecological Rationality.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16, no. 3 (2007): 167–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00497.x.˄

  11. Pugliese, Joseph. Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence. Anima: Critical Race Studies Otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.˄

  12. Wiltshire, Patricia. “Forensic Ecology.” In Crime Scene to Court, edited by Niamh NicDaeid and Peter C. White, 62–107. Croydon: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2024.˄

  13. See the chapter on "forensic ecology" in Gandy, Matthew. Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022.˄

  14. Keck, Frédéric. “Sentinels for the Environment: Birdwatchers in Taiwan and Hong Kong.” China Perspectives 2015, no. 2 (2015): 43–52. https://doi.org/10/ghkhx6.˄

  15. Duarte, Carlos M., Lucille Chapuis, Shaun P. Collin, et al. “The Soundscape of the Anthropocene Ocean.” Science 371, no. 6529 (2021): eaba4658. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba4658.˄

  16. Barclay, Leah, Toby Gifford, and Simon Linke. “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Freshwater Ecoacoustics.” Freshwater Science 39, no. 2 (2020): 356–61. https://doi.org/10.1086/709130.˄

  17. Linke, Simon, Camille Desjonqueres, Toby Gifford, and Leah Barclay. “Freshwater Ecoacoustics—a New Addition to the Limnologists’ Methods Toolkit.” In Encyclopedia of Inland Waters, vol. 4, edited by Thomas Mehner and Klement Tockner, 657–66. Elsevier, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-819166-8.00210-3.˄

  18. Tonolla, Diego, Mark S. Lorang, Kurt Heutschi, Chris C. Gotschalk, and Klement Tockner. “Characterization of Spatial Heterogeneity in Underwater Soundscapes at the River Segment Scale.” Limnology and Oceanography 56, no. 6 (2011): 2319–33. https://doi.org/10.4319/lo.2011.56.6.2319.˄

  19. Jerkø, Harald, Irmeli Turunen-Rise, Per Sveinung Enger, and Ole Sand. “Hearing in the Eel (Anguilla Anguilla).” Journal of Comparative Physiology A 165, no. 4 (1989): 455–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00611234.˄

  20. Simpson, Stephen D., Julia Purser, and Andrew N. Radford. “Anthropogenic Noise Compromises Antipredator Behaviour in European Eels.” Global Change Biology 21, no. 2 (2015): 586–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12685.˄

  21. Zhang, Xinhai, Xiaomei Xu, Xinbing Tu, Wenpeng Wang, and Yougan Chen. “Preliminary Exploration of Underwater Noise Impact on Japanese Eel (Anguilla Japonica) Elvers.” 2016 IEEE/OES China Ocean Acoustics (COA), 2016, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1109/COA.2016.7535791.˄

  22. Sand, Olav, Per S. Enger, Hans Erik Karlsen, Frank Knudsen, and Torstein Kvernstuen. “Avoidance Responses to Infrasound in Downstream Migrating European Silver Eels, Anguilla Anguilla.” Environmental Biology of Fishes 57, no. 3 (2000): 327–36. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007575426155.˄

  23. Piper, Adam T., Paul R. White, Rosalind M. Wright, Timothy G. Leighton, and Paul S. Kemp. “Response of Seaward-Migrating European Eel (Anguilla Anguilla) to an Infrasound Deterrent.” Ecological Engineering 127 (2019): 480–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2018.12.001.˄

  24. MacLeod, M. E. Cole, Thomas C. Pratt, Chris K. Elvidge, Paul S. Kemp, and Steven J. Cooke. “Reviewing the Potential for Behavioral Guidance to Improve Downstream Passage of Out-Migrating Anguillid Eels.” River Research and Applications 41, no. 10 (2025): 2287–96. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.70042.˄

  25. Popper, Arthur N., Anthony D. Hawkins, Fred Jacobs, Paul T. Jacobson, Peter Johnson, and Justin Krebs. “Use of Sound to Guide the Movement of Eels and Other Fishes within Rivers: A Critical Review.” Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 30, no. 4 (2020): 605–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-020-09620-0.˄

  26. Mary Fish Poland, “The Character and Significance of Sound Production among Fishes of the Western North Atlantic,” Bulletin of the Bingham Oceanographic Collection 15, no. 3 (1954).˄

  27. Lagardère, Jean Paul, and Bruno Ernande. “Émissions Sonores Enregistrées En Marais Salé et Attribuées à l’anguille Européenne.” Comptes Rendus Biologies 327, no. 4 (2004): 353–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crvi.2004.02.007.˄

  28. Pujiyati, Sri, Ariel Hananya, Bambang Retnoaji, and Muhammad Z. Lubis. “Bioacoustic of Anguilla Bicolor (Mc Clelland, 1844) Feeding Behaviour under Controlled Conditions.” AACL Bioflux 13, no. 1 (2020): 261–67.˄

  29. Durif, Caroline M. F., Hans Hagen Stockhausen, Anne Berit Skiftesvik, Alessandro Cresci, Daniel Nyqvist, and Howard I. Browman. “A Unifying Hypothesis for the Spawning Migrations of Temperate Anguillid Eels.” Fish and Fisheries 23, no. 2 (2022): 358–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12621.˄

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