Shifting Baselines

Hagfish are gaining popularity in Korea by the minute! Caravalho Fisheries is now trying to develop a live market for the "primitive and somewhat disgusting eel-like creatures". About 5,000 pounds of hagfish, peacefully coiled at the bottom of their tank, were shipped to Seoul, where they should arrive this weekend. The hagfish are not exactly a status food but more like a comfort food (the delightful article below compares them to jalapeno poppers). And yes, the shipping costs more than the hagfish themselves, which, given the chance, would enter a dead body and eat it from the inside out. I've never seen a jalapeno popper do that...

Live slime eels to be shipped to Korea by Carvalho Fishieres -- a possible new market

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [Eureka Times Standard] May 29, 2007- by John Driscoll - Eureka - Korean restaurants will be serving a slime eel appetizer with a soju chaser -- shipped from Humboldt Bay starting next week.

As part of an effort to tap a market for live hagfish and build a fishery for local fishermen, Carvalho Fisheries and exporter Peter Chu were preparing to box up about 5,000 pounds of the primitive and somewhat disgusting eel-like creatures on Friday. Kept alive in oxygenated bags inside Styrofoam coolers, the hagfish will be in Seoul this weekend.

Coiled like sleeping snakes in the bottom of live tanks at Carvalho's waterfront dock, the hagfish are peaceful.

'When they're comfortable, they curl up,' Chu said, gently drawing a net through the mass of hagfish.

It's the characteristic that earned the fish one of its names that makes it seem an unlikely candidate for consumption. When riled up or in danger, the slime eel generously emits a defensive slime, an effective defense against predators.

If it's not exactly a delicacy in Korea -- it has its proponents like those who like say, jalapeño poppers or raw oysters -- the older generation likes it barbecued, fried or broiled, backed up by soju, the nation's most popular booze.

The demand for hagfish is greater than what Korea can supply from its own waters, and it taps Japanese, West Coast and East Coast fisheries to make up the difference. The vast majority comes frozen to Korea, where the primary use is for its skin, out of which wallets and similar items are made. The frozen fish is also eaten, but a fresher product like that being shipped out by Carvalho is expected to be more sought after.

'This is the strangest soul food I've ever seen,' Carvalho said.

Just because it's strange doesn't mean it isn't viable. Humboldt Bay fisherman D. Ray Pemberton is a single dad who can't afford months away from home to fish for salmon. He and some other fishermen had heard that there may be a market for live hagfish, and asked Carvalho about the possibility.

Pemberton was used to hagfish as a nuisance when he fished for black cod. Left on the hook too long, black cod can be susceptible to slime eels which can work their way inside a fish through its gills or anus and eat them from the inside out. But their attraction to dead or dying fish makes the hagfish easy to trap.

Simple 5-gallon buckets with a conical entrance tied on with biodegradable cotton are baited with an oily fish like mackerel or black cod. The buckets are strung along a line sunk to the bottom. The eels swim in but can't swim out. The Humboldt Bay fishermen have learned how to do it from an out-of-the-area fisherman who has for years been catching and freezing hagfish to be sent to Asia to be used as a leather product. He delivered a load to Carvalho last week.

The opportunity Pemberton sees is tempered by a smidgen of skepticism.

'There's some anticipation,' Pemberton said. 'Fishermen are very empirical. They believe what they see.'

Humboldt Bay was part of a network of ports that fished for hagfish during its heyday. The West Coast fishery got started in the late 1980s, specifically for hagfish skins. California landed 4.3 million pounds in 1990, the peak year. The fish could only be imported duty-free to tanneries, and to even trade Korea was required to ship back an equal value in fish leather products.

But in 1994, the G7 forced Korea to take the fish for consumption too, Chu said. It was a limited market, and while anyone could import the fish for consumption, it came with a 10 percent duty.

The fish leather market began to flounder when it became apparent that many Pacific hagfish had inferior skins. Buyers looked to the East Coast, whose hagfish skins were of higher quality. The Atlantic-side fishery now supplies 80 percent of the market.

Chu and his business partner began exploring the potential for a live fish market three years ago. Despite the fish's different texture and color from the long-eaten Korean eel variety, older Koreans enjoyed the fish. The market for live hagfish may absorb 132,000 pounds a month, Chu said, enough to make a decent little fishery for Humboldt Bay.

To keep the fishery stable will require consistently good service and high quality, Carvalho said.

The freight costs far outweigh the cost of the product, but it doesn't benefit anyone if the fish don't arrive in Seoul as fresh as possible. The hagfish need to be kept alive for 40 hours to make the journey in good condition, tucked into the Styrofoam boxes which hold about 50 pounds of eels each.

'It's up to us to do a good job of getting these things across the puddle alive,' Carvalho said.

Hagfish -- slime eel

The hagfish is one of the most primitive vertebrates alive, existing on an evolutionary cusp. Scientists haven't made up their minds about whether they are actually fish. Generally about 18 inches long, they resemble lamprey.

It was dubbed the slime eel for a defensive mechanism by which it releases through its pores a protein that binds with water, generating large amounts of slime. When the danger is passed, the creature ties itself in an overhand knot and slides it down the length of its body, peeling away the slime.

Unlike lamprey, which clamp onto prey with a set of teeth, hagfish enter dead or dying fish through existing openings, eating them from the inside out.

'It's a little gruesome,' said California Sea Grant advisor Peter Nelson. 'You could probably build a little sci-fi flick around it.'

For the most part, however, hagfish eat small invertebrates they find by nosing around in the mud on the sea floor. Muddy bottom is common off the North Coast, and some of the same areas that hold Dungeness crab also support hagfish. They usually live between 40 and 200 fathoms, or 240 to 1,200 feet.