The Story

Maybe you’ve already read my story about Passamaquoddy elver conservation in the October issue of Down East Magazine. If you haven’t, you can read it here. If you’re tired of reading about elvers (baby eels), I’m sorry.1 This won’t last forever, better luck next time, etc.

Here’s the headline + subheading of my story, so you know what we’re dealing with:

Let’s set the scene. Here I am talking with two of the fishermen featured in the story (Adam Newell and Erik Francis) under the red pines at Big Head, above the clam garden Erik stewards2 in Sipayik, one of three distinct self-governing Passamaquoddy communities within the tribe’s ancestral homeland.3 It was that strange (for Maine) and windy 90+ degree day in June and comic relief pine cones4 kept falling from the trees as we spoke about Erik’s history with elvers (catching them in Dixie cups as a kid) and the realities of the very present and ongoing long struggles for Wabanaki sovereignty, foodways, and life.

A lot of restraint goes into writing a story like this, even before a first draft goes to an editor. The tension of whatever trust exists between a writer and the person they are interviewing/spending time with/what is observed in those spaces, the story that wants to be told as seen from all the perspectives one tries to report on, the story that would get the most clicks, startling information that arrives at the eleventh hour, and the revision process as the story migrates into the hands of a talented editor who may not have the same allegiances/concerns/relationships to continue cultivating but who can help massage a story into a more cohesive shape—an essential function! I’m grateful for the patience offered by folks on all sides of this story.

So much was cut during the editing process (I have a sometimes bothersome tendency to write long, especially in first drafts 😬) that I worried the story wouldn’t hold, but I think it did (thanks to Down East’s editor-in-chief Will Grunewald).

After reading it my dad said, “Hey, great story, but I would have included fewer facts and more backstory.”5

Had I been in charge, I would have kept the facts but added more backstory. There is only so much space in a print magazine. For better or worse, I am in charge of this Substack, so I am devoting this edition to some bits and pieces that were left out of the story.

“Have you ever seen a barnacle move?” - Alison McKellar

Before I met Erik, I met Alison McKellar, a white Camden select board member, who spent the spring documenting all the ways elvers were dying at the Montgomery Dam and Harbor Park due to the lack of a fishway, and the impact of rising sea levels on human-made seawalls.6 There’s too much backstory to get into here, so I’ll leave you with a few quotes that didn't make it in. (There’s more on this in the story itself.)

“I think most people have that instinct when they see an animal dying, ‘I should try to save it,’ right?” McKellar says. Her son, Mason, is concerned about the elvers, too. “He’ll say, ‘Mom, there’s no way this one is going to make it.’ And I have to explain to him why we have to leave them where they are even when they clearly face such low odds of getting to where they’re trying to go.”

McKellar is aware that her ad hoc rescue efforts are not a long-term solution. “Sure, I can take a picture and try to save them one at a time, but that one stranded elver is just the ambassador elver for the rest of them. For something to change, more people need to become aware of the larger problem.”

Enter Erik Francis

This is Erik Francis, one of three fishermen involved with this elver conservation initiative. I met Erik7 one morning in late May, coincidentally, also in Camden.8 Erik was under pressure to deliver, as this particular catch and release was being closely watched—not by Marine Patrol but by an underwater videographer as part of Nova’s “Sea Change: Gulf of Maine” three-part series, which premiered over the summer.

Anyway, the paragraph you see below got cut from the story. It contains links to videos of Erik and the other fishermen catching and releasing large quantities of elvers above dams.

“Doing their conservation”

While the focus of this story was a new Passamaquoddy-led elver conservation initiative, many fishermen—both state and Wabanaki—take part in assisting elvers’ upstream migration every spring. I’ve seen it myself.

Here’s another quote that didn’t make the cut:

As one buyer I spoke to said, “If you go TikTok or Facebook, you’ll see thousands of pounds getting dumped over. They’ll do it on their last set, they’ll dump whatever they’ve got. So they may whine about it and want to be picked to take part in this elver conservation program, but they’ve done it, they’ve been doing their conservation. I’ve told them for years—record it. Go ahead at these ASMFC meetings and show them, ‘This is what I dumped back this year.’ They’re like, ‘Oh, they won’t listen to me.’ I tell them, ‘they will, they will.’”

Does this approach to elver conservation actually work?

Elvers/eels have been successfully “trapped and trucked” like this in Ireland, New Zealand, and Pennsylvania. Ellen Rupell Shell writes about some studies that have been done on eel translocation in her book, Slippery Beast, with a range of outcomes. But no such studies have been done in Maine. Anecdotally, trapping and releasing eels within their rivers of origin may sound like a good thing—and maybe it is—but no one can say yet, for sure.

The Photos

All photos for this story were taken by Nolan Altvater, a Passamaquoddy visual artist from Sipayik. Check out more of Nolan’s work here. Photos below are either included within what Down East printed or are outtakes from shoots for the story.10

Gratitude

I’m grateful to everyone who made time to talk to me for this story—on and off the record—for the digressions, the candor, and the evasiveness. There are a hell of a lot of people in Maine who care about elvers (and eels) for a hell of a lot of different reasons. Many of these people are very opinionated. I get it. There’s a hell of a lot at stake. (If you are one of these people and you have experienced a reaction to reading this piece that you would like to share, I’m here for it.11)

Releasing stories out into the world and knowing that folks who are in the story will likely read it can be agonizing for some writers (myself included). I’m reminded of this recent tweet from Krista Langlois:

😂 To be clear, I don’t think people become baristas because they have “given up” nor do I believe that “sources” need to “like” my stories for them to be worth writing. In my more journalistic writing endeavors, I care deeply about getting the facts right, representing people accurately/fairly, treating them with care, and hopefully, telling a good tale. I’ve also spent the past few months (and many years of my life) thinking about what conditions need to be in place in order for writers and the people they write about to have frank conversations about what it all means, to restore imbalances, and what it takes materially/logistically/psychologically for that possibility to be within reach. I don’t always succeed at this. I’m learning.

The responses I’ve received so far12 prove that this story doesn’t exist in a void. It now exists in relation to and with people it is concerned with as well as people who may not have known anything about eels before reading it. Thank you for reading it, whether you “like” the story (or eels!) or not.

Anyone who has been around me at all over the past few months has likely received an earful of eels (gross), along with my blathering on about ethics, storytelling, doubt, positionality, power, etc. Thank you for receiving this. And big thanks to Eli Kao, who was present for much of the reporting for this story and my processing of the experience at large. Thank you, Derek, for not changing the channel when the eels took over.

Here are some resources for further learning:

Bomazeen Land Trust
First Light
Nibezun
Niweskok
Wabanaki REACH
WHERE — Atlantic Black Box

General Maintenance

I am available for gigs/projects/work again. Work samples/services are here. Thank you to everyone who has connected me with people and projects.

Currents

Sitting with Uncertainty

I am enjoying thinking about the need for cognition and for closure, vis-a-vis this episode of Hidden Brain.13

Scuba Diving

I want to learn how to scuba dive so that I can swim with eels (and write about it).

Cremisan - Alabaster DePlume

From Alabaster DePlume:

Some of you I know are in a state of despair. Perhaps you don’t know the good you do purely by refusing to collapse, refusing to die, to go silent, to acquiesce to what is being perpetrated by the Israeli State and our own nation’s representatives. For what it’s worth, I see you, and you embolden me. I believe in you.

Some of this music was recorded in a valley that is in the process of being annexed. 62 miles from Rafah no less, while the atrocity was perpetrated there. We sang songs, and played our improvised music. What could we do?

You might ask yourself what can I do. I ask myself too. I have no idea. But we are the perfect people for this time - because we are the people IN this time. I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you that I see you.

Arms Embargo Now
Demand an Immediate Ceasefire
Maine Coalition for Palestine
Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights

Goodbye for now.

Thank you for reading.

♡ Michele