Eel Capabilities: Student Brief

Welcome to the eel project. In November you will spend four weeks on research and one on writing. You will map what short-finned eels can do and be at each stage of their lives, build a deep map of places they pass through, and identify what nobody knows yet. Your results will feed the lab's eel research, and the methods will serve you in any design project that involves nonhuman beings.

Why This Project Matters

• Short-finned eels (Anguilla australis), called kooyang by Gunditjmara, live in rivers, lakes, wetlands and drains across south-eastern Australia, including central Melbourne. Adults leave their home waters on a journey of almost 3,000 km to spawn in the ocean.1
• Most research on these eels serves fisheries, aquaculture and management. It explains how eels survive human use and says much less about how they thrive through their whole lives. Evidence also thins out once eels leave the coast, and researchers first tracked their ocean migration only in 2021.2 This project tests that impression.
• The lab has used the capabilities approach to set design goals for powerful owls.3 Eels push this approach further, because their lifestyles change as they move between ocean, estuary and fresh water.

Key Ideas

• Capabilities are what a being is able to do and be, such as feeding, moving or sheltering. The capabilities approach to justice asks whether beings have real opportunities to achieve what they value.3 Philosophers have extended it to animals,4 and researchers have adapted it to Māori philosophy and to Aboriginal wellbeing indicators.5^, 6
• Functionings are what a being actually does. A river without barriers gives eels the capability to migrate. A tagged eel reaching the sea shows a functioning.
• Life stages. Short-finned eels hatch in the ocean as leaf-shaped larvae called leptocephali. Near the coast they turn into transparent glass eels, which darken into elvers and move upstream. They then grow for years or decades as yellow eels. Mature silver eels return to the ocean to spawn once and die. A recent study of the European eel shows how to describe a whole life cycle.7
• Settings. Following the owl paper, compare eels in captive settings (aquaculture, the Melbourne Museum eel pond), liminal settings (city lakes, drains, weirs) and wild or managed settings (Budj Bim and Lake Condah).

Your Question

Start from this question and hypothesis, then refine them in Week 1.

• Question: How can the capabilities approach describe an animal whose capabilities change across life stages and habitats?
• Hypothesis: A matrix of capabilities by life stage reveals gaps in eel evidence, because research concentrates on the stages and places that humans harvest and manage.

Starting Capability List

This list adapts the owl paper's three groups. Revise it with evidence by adding, merging, splitting or dropping items. Note whether each capability belongs to an individual, a cohort or a population.

Before You Start

Use October to prepare, so that November goes to research.

• Read the owl paper, including its tables and supplementary evidence.3 It is your model. Then read the other sources cited in this brief.
• Ask to join the lab's Zotero group library and install Better BibTeX. Follow Zotero Database Principles of Use.
• Install VS Code and Quarto. Render a test document that cites one reference by its Better BibTeX key, such as parkerInterspeciesCulturesFuture2022.
• Read How to Write and Use an Argument Plan. Your report will follow this structure.
• Skim the lab's eel notes, especially Australia and Interventions in Eel.
• Set up the image catalogue described below, log your first ten images and practise photography.

Places and Journeys

Eels move at night, hide by day and are relatively rare in the city, so you will probably see few or none. The project can work without sightings of living eels. It builds a deep map, which layers images, measurements, records, histories and stories about places where eels live or pass.11^, 12 From these layers you will write an experiential account, which reconstructs from evidence what an eel encounters and senses at each place and life stage. If obtained, signings of living eels can add to this account.

The sites, routes and methods below are suggestions. Explore, follow leads and suggest better options.

Sites

Choose sites with evidence from published studies, historical accounts and research-grade records on the Atlas of Living Australia and iNaturalist. Include at least one less modified creek, wetland or estuary near Melbourne, so you can compare it with city sites. Possible starting points:

• Tromgin, the Ornamental Lake in the Royal Botanic Gardens, where Boon Wurrung men speared eels in 1841 and eels still live (see Australian Indigenous Connections in Eel Project)
• the Melbourne Museum eel pond, where a 2024 student project detected eel DNA10
• the Dights Falls weir and fishway, a barrier on the eels' route up the Birrarung (Yarra)
• Webb Bridge in Docklands, locally known as Eel Trap Bridge, on the lower river
• drains near the University, on a historical eel route (see Eels of Elizabeth Street in Melbourne)

Budj Bim and Lake Condah lie about four hours' drive west. A visit is optional. It should take place on a tour led by Gunditjmara guides. See Budj Bim.

Journeys

Reconstruct one journey, such as a young eel's route from Nairm (Port Phillip Bay) up the Birrarung to Dights Falls, or a silver eel's route from Tromgin out to the bay. Use Sensory Ecology and the Umwelt section of Eel Project to judge what an eel could sense. Mark each stretch as known, likely or guessed. For each place, consider these layers:

• images, including underwater images where possible
• sound recordings
• flow, depth, temperature and water clarity, from your notes and public monitoring data
• barriers, passages, cover and food
• records of eels from databases, studies and newspapers
• histories and stories from published Indigenous and historical sources

Season and Weather

• November is late spring. The Eastern Kulin seasonal calendar records the return of eels in spring (see Eel Project), and at Lake Condah short-finned eels migrate to the sea mostly in spring.8 In Week 1, check which life stages may be moving in November, and where.
• Eels move mostly at night and more often after high river flows.9 If heavy rain falls during the project, revisit a site to record the change. If it stays dry, use public river-flow data, flood records and historical photographs to describe how each place changes. Dry conditions add a layer too, because they show what eels meet at low flow.

Future Methods

Your account will be incomplete, and its gaps are findings. For each major gap in the matrix, propose methods that could fill it, and combine more than one approach. Explain what each method would add, what it would cost, what it could miss and whose knowledge it relies on. Look beyond these options:

• Tracking and sensing eels: acoustic tags in rivers and electronic tags at sea,9^, 2 underwater cameras and eDNA,10 imaging sonar, and hydrophone recordings of soundscapes (see Bioacoustics in Eel Project).
• Reading eel bodies: otolith chemistry, genetics, contaminants and parasites, which record where eels have lived and what they have met (see Witnesses and Archivists).
• Keeping eels: aquaria, ponds, aquaculture and laboratory experiments. Captivity allows close observation but limits the very capabilities under study, and it needs animal ethics approval. Weigh both.
• Working with humans: ethnography, interviews and oral histories with fishers, managers, scientists, aquarists and eel enthusiasts, as well as co-learning workshops. A recent multispecies ethnography of eels worked with fishers, an aquarium, a laboratory, a fish market and an eel festival.13 Work with Traditional Owners follows protocols that communities lead.
• Reading the past: archives, newspapers, maps and historical photographs (see Historical Ecology and Approaches to History in Eel Project).
• Embodying and imagining: pretending to be an eel, for example by following its route at night or at water level, as some writers have tried to live as other animals.14 Other options include reenactment, sensory simulation, speculative design and fiction, and collaboration with artists (see Walking).
• Modelling and mapping: deep mapping, GIS, hydrological models and simulations of eel movement (see Mapping).

Five Weeks

Write in Quarto from Week 1. Each week's work becomes a section of the report, so Week 5 is for revision.

Evidence Table

Record one claim per row in a spreadsheet saved as CSV.

Images

Why Images Matter

• Evidence. Found images can show capabilities in action, such as an eel in a burrow, elvers climbing a wet weir or an eel crossing grass after rain. Your own images will mostly show places that support or block eels along their journeys, such as fishways, culverts, drains, banks and water. The owl paper used images as evidence of new owl behaviours in cities.3
• A gap. The lab holds few good images of Australian eels in their places. Most of its eel images are diagrams from papers.
• History. Old illustrations, photographs and newspaper reports show past eel places and human-eel relations. They help set a baseline for comparison with the present.
• Reuse. The lab needs images it can publish in papers, talks and exhibitions. Publishers require source and rights information, so the metadata matters as much as the picture.

Finding Images

Prefer public domain, CC0 and CC BY licences. Catalogue CC BY-NC or all-rights-reserved images only when they are exceptional, and mark them as needing permission.

• Atlas of Living Australia and iNaturalist, filtered by licence
• Wikimedia Commons
• Biodiversity Heritage Library for historical illustrations
• Trove, State Library Victoria and Museums Victoria Collections for historical photographs and reports
• Data Sources for more

Taking Images

• Before your first visit, look up what makes a good documentary and nature photograph, covering composition, light, focus, exposure and scale.
• Photograph each site wide, for context, and close, for detail.
• Photograph from an eel's position too: at water level, at drain and culvert mouths, and at fishway entrances.
• Record habitats, barriers, passages and signs of eels, and eels themselves if you see them.
• Shoot in DNG (RAW) if your camera or phone allows, otherwise in the highest-quality JPG. A good phone is enough. If you already have camera skills, you could borrow a camera from the University, where one is available.
• Underwater images are an option if your equipment permits. A waterproof sleeve for a smartphone is enough to start. Take them from the bank or in shallow, still water, and only where site rules allow.
• Turn on location recording so each file stores where you took it.
• Your photographs remain yours. Agree with the lab to license them under CC BY 4.0, so the lab can publish them with credit.

Quality

• The long edge should be at least 3,000 pixels, which is enough for a full-width printed page.
• Images should be sharp and well exposed. Keep originals uncropped and unedited, and save edits as copies.
• Download the full-resolution master file and skip previews and thumbnails.

Catalogue

Keep one row per image in a spreadsheet saved as CSV, and store the files in the shared project folder. Embed the caption, creator, rights and place in each file's IPTC metadata with Adobe Bridge or digiKam (or ExifTool from Python or other languages), so the information travels with the image.

What You Hand In

1. A Quarto report of 3,000 to 4,000 words that follows the argument plan. Include the matrix of capabilities by life stage, a gap map, the deep map with an experiential account of one journey, a table of design opportunities, a table of future methods and 5 to 10 research questions.
2. The evidence table.
3. The image catalogue and image files.
4. A Zotero collection in the lab group library with every source you cite.
5. A 10-minute presentation.

Ground Rules

• Observe only. If you see eels, leave them untouched, uncaught and unfed. Handling eels requires animal ethics approval and fisheries permits.
• Stay safe. Go with someone near water, keep clear of fast or deep water, especially after rain, and tell someone where you are going.
• Follow site rules. Check photography rules at the Gardens and the Museum, stay on public land and leave drones at home.
• Respect people. Photograph identifiable people only with their agreement.
• Respect Indigenous knowledge. Use published sources and name the community they come from. Flag culturally sensitive images for the lab to review. The lab will arrange any contact with communities.
• Check identifications. Use research-grade records. Short-finned and long-finned eels look alike, so note how certain each identification is.
• Keep claims and interpretations apart. Record what eels did separately from what authors or observers think it means.

Lab Notes

• Eel for eel evidence, and Eel Names and Languages for names of eels and life stages
• Eel Project for the wider project this work feeds
• Capabilities, Nonhuman Capabilities and Sensory Ecology for background
• Mapping for deep mapping
• Student Guidelines for searching the literature

References

Footnotes

1. Griffiths, Billy, Larissa Behrendt, and Sean Ulm. The First Inventors: How People Shaped a Continent. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2026.˄

2. Koster, Wayne M., Kim Aarestrup, Kim Birnie-Gauvin, Ben Church, David Dawson, Jarod Lyon, Justin O’Connor, et al. “First Tracking of the Oceanic Spawning Migrations of Australasian Short-Finned Eels (Anguilla australis).” Scientific Reports 11, no. 1 (2021): 22976. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02325-9.˄

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. Nussbaum, Martha C. “The Capabilities Approach and Animal Entitlements.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey, 228–54. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.˄

5. Watene, Krushil. “Valuing Nature: Māori Philosophy and the Capability Approach.” Oxford Development Studies 44, no. 3 (2016): 287–96. https://doi.org/10/gpcgxh.˄

6. 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.˄

7. 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.˄

8. Bodenhamer, David J., John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris. Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.˄

9. Springett, Selina. “Going Deeper or Flatter: Connecting Deep Mapping, Flat Ontologies and the Democratizing of Knowledge.” Humanities 4, no. 4 (2015): 623–36. https://doi.org/10/gnstx4.˄

10. Appleford, Emily, Tilong Huang, and Qingyang Wang. The Urban Eel Odyssey: Tracing Current Migration Pathways through Melbourne’s Storm Drains. No. ENGR90038. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2024.˄

11. Koster, Wayne, Ben Church, David Crook, David Dawson, Ben Fanson, Justin O’Connor, and Ivor Stuart. “Factors Influencing Migration of Short-Finned Eels (Anguilla australis) over 3 Years from a Wetland System, Lake Condah, South-East Australia, Downstream to the Sea.” Journal of Fish Biology 104, no. 6 (2024): 1824–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.15726.˄

12. Crook, David A., Jed I. Macdonald, John R. Morrongiello, Chris A. Belcher, Danny Lovett, Adam Walker, and Simon J. Nicol. “Environmental Cues and Extended Estuarine Residence in Seaward Migrating Eels (Anguilla australis).” Freshwater Biology 59, no. 8 (2014): 1710–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.12376.˄

13. Dollin, Jen. “Eel Worlds of the Dyarubbin: A Multispecies Ethnography.” PhD Thesis, Western Sydney University, 2025.˄

14. Foster, Charles. Being a Beast. London: Profile Books, 2016.˄

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