Elvers:
SO WHAT ARE ELVERS?
Elvers look more like clear noodles than fish, but in reality they are baby eels that migrate at night from the Atlantic Ocean to freshwater lakes and ponds.
And the Chinese and South Korean’s [sic] eat up Elvers like we eat up hot dogs… except of course our American hot dogs cost a fraction of what a pound of elvers costs… but at any rate, Asians consider these tiny eels much more of a delicacy than we do. [“YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT FISH IS SELLING FOR $2,500 PER POUND!” Joseph Simonds, SaltStrong]
Noted in “How we finally tracked European eels all the way to the Sargasso Sea,” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (21 January 2023, paywall):
For the next few months, glass eels wash in and out of estuaries, feeding and growing and gradually transforming into elvers, which are dark brown and about 12 cm long. At this point they are ready to swap the sea for freshwater and make their way up rivers and streams to find a place to grow up. Once settled in a lake or river, they transform again, into yellow eels. “This life stage can be decades long,” says Wootton. “And this is usually what we see when we see eels within our rivers and lakes and lochs.”
I’ll be trying to work that word into dinnertime conversation, I will.
