- [Dan] With demand fueled
by America's obsession with sushi,
eel consumption has grown like crazy
over the last 20 to 30 years.
The wild thing is, most of the eels eaten in America
were actually caught here as little baby glass eels,
flown around the world to grow
and then flown all the way back to be served
in American restaurants.
But one company is trying to change that.
So today I'm up in Maine to see how Sara Rademaker,
at American Unagi, is building
America's only glass eel farming operation.
(upbeat music)
- The first eel's that I grew were in my basement.
(laughing)
- [Dan] That's crazy.
- I hear all good startups happen there,
or in the garage.
I didn't intentionally come to Maine to grow eels.
There's an eel fishery here for glass eels.
It's one of the most valuable fisheries
in the U.S. per pound.
Like these eels go for $2,000 a pound as babies.
I said, why isn't anybody growing this here in the U.S.?
Clearly there's a market, that's really kind of
what started this whole dive into eels.
- [Dan] Once a year,
Maine's legendary glass eel fishermen
set out their nets to catch tiny transparent eels
that are migrating along the shoreline.
The fishermen filter, clean, and weigh the baby eels
and then sell them off to farmers.
From here, Sara introduces the glass eels to her tanks
and starts the long process of growing eels
to be sold across the country live and smoked.
- This is our glass eel system
where they come in first off the river.
- So incredible.
- Look at them, see that little face?
- Do your eels grow faster than they would in the wild?
- Yeah, so in Maine, it takes anywhere
from five years to 30 years for them to reach maturity.
- And yours can get to maturity in two at some point?
- Seven months to two years.
- Holy shoot.
- Yeah, our eels are happy,
so that way they grow the best, they taste the best.
- [Dan] What do eels eat?
- So when they're young,
they eat everything from algae to insects.
And then as they grow older, they start to eat more fish.
The cool thing with fish farming
is fish are one of the most efficient sources of protein.
So with our eels, 1.4 pounds of fish feed
will produce one pound of eel.
When you compare that to other animals,
like something like a cow, 80 to 10 pounds of food
for every pound.
- [Dan] Why is that? They have less excrement?
- They're cold-blooded
so they don't spend a lot of their energy making heat
or warming their body.
The other thing is you've got them in water,
so they don't have to deal with gravity.
- So she's just turning on the feeder now.
So what is actually happening in this device?
- So basically as this bin spins,
it drops feed in for the eels.
- Oh my God, that's so cool.
So what's the point in this basket?
- It's just a good way for us to have the eels
come up here to visit,
It allows us to see how the eels are doing,
make sure they look healthy, their fins look good,
It also helps prevent us from making sure
we don't waste any feed.
So the basket will catch it,
we can make sure that we're not overfeeding,
underfeeding all of that.
And it's just nice, it's fun, I love these fish.
- Part of this is just fun?
- Yeah, look at all those chubby little faces.
- So what would happen if there was eel in here
that was just a much faster grower.
- It wouldn't eat the same size feed,
it would be bad farming.
So as they grow,
we have to make sure that they're with like sizes, right?
- [Dan] So where does the poop go?
- Keeping a clean tank
is a big part of keeping our eels happy and healthy.
So water is constantly circulating actually this way.
And what happens, same way when you flush the toilet,
is you get waste coming to the center,
this pulls it up off the bottom,
and then runs it through this drain.
All of those drains drain the solid waste
down into a central drain
that then runs through what's called a drum filter.
- [Dan] Water is constantly circulating
through the whole system.
It first runs through a drum filter
which uses suction to pull water
through a fine screen, to catch solid waste,
and then it runs through a pool of biomedia,
which adds back beneficial bacteria.
- So then what we do is we have to make sure
we have good gases.
So it's taking out the CO2 and adding oxygen.
- [Dan] From here,
the eels getting close to market size
are moved to the next room where they have bigger tanks
and bigger feed.
- We're gonna be growing a lot
in the next year and building a new facility.
But this is where we're doing it right now.
The same sort of components that you just saw,
we're removing solid,
we're cleaning up the water,
we're sending it back into the tank.
When the eels get to a certain size,
we're able to start pulling the eels off for harvest,
grading them by hand, ready time.
- [Dan] Okay, here we go.
- [Dan] Oh, crazy, so these are,
I mean, they are different sizes.
- [Sara] Yeah, this is just a very simple grader,
we're actually kind of designed similar
to what the Japanese farms do.
- [Dan] What's going there?
- Anything that needs more time to grow.
- [Dan] So most of these eels need more time.
- [Sara] Yeah.
- We're very picky on what we're putting out
because sometimes there'll be ones that like, they're big
but we know they're going to get bigger.
So, yeah, cause like, see like this guy,
like that's a nice size eel, but it's long.
And so we're like, we'd rather wait to sell out
larger products, more consolidated, plump exactly.
- Are you gonna touch any eel?
- Yeah, I'll touch an eel.
- Oh my God, all right, this guy looks pretty big here nope.
Takes a little bit of getting used to.
- Were you able to get one?
- Nope.
- You can't give up.
- [Dan I'm 0 for 2. You said they weren't slimy.
- [Kathleen] I guess I'm just used to it. I don't know.
- [Dan] Oh my God, How do you do it?
Is there a method to this?
- [Sara] You just stay relaxed.
- Yep.
- [Sara] Nailed it.
- There you go, good job.
- I know, I was looking for way too much praise there.
Can we get one more big one.
- Are you just looking for an edit so you look good?
- No.
- First time.
- [Sara] After we've sorted them out into the sizes,
we take the ones that are ready for harvest
and they actually go into a purge tank.
So they hang out, we drop the temperature down
and let them get relaxed
before we either ship them out or process them.
They'll hang out here for a couple of days,
again, water temperature drops,
they get relaxed and chilled out
and then we either sell them live,
so we'll bag them up, ship them out
or we'll send them down to Charlie.
- [Dan] The next stop for these eels is two hours South
in a town called Bremen, Maine,
where Charlie Walsh processes the eels
and prepares them for smoking.
- We hold the eels on an ice slurry
to keep them very cold
but then also protect the skin from oxidizing.
And so end up with a beautiful product
that has just been bled after being quickly dispatched.
- [Dan] So you taught yourself actually how to do this?
- Yeah, when COVID hit, we ended up
not being able to sell as many live eels,
and so there was a real need to be able
to have a processed product.
So I locked myself in my kitchen,
and figured out how to do it on my own.
And now I'm able to do it pretty quickly.
What I do is anchor the eel through a nail
and the cutting board, and start with the knife
directly above the spine,
and we're going to just slowly push our way down the spine.
- [Dan] Jeez, Louise.
- [Charlie] And then open to make sure
that we're avoiding the gut cavity
and then very carefully, work down the fish again.
You can just open the eel,
get underneath the guts from one side,
also then get the membrane out,
we're gonna come over with the second face of the knife
underneath the spine.
And we're gonna very carefully push underneath
and then follow the spine down the fish.
- [Dan] This seems robotic.
- This is 20,000 eels in.
- Do you think I should actually try this?
- Yeah, you're welcome to.
- Do you not think that when we're doing...
when we're trying to make a piece of content here,
that is about sustainability,
that watching me hack my way through an eel
is kind of in poor taste?
- No, cause it might make me look really good.
(laughs)
- Just even trying to grab it.
- [Dan] I mean, you can't honestly grip onto it.
- I haven't butterflied anything in years.
I'm glad I'm starting with an eel in the freezing cold.
- [Charlie] You're gonna take this thumb,
and you're gonna put it right there
and that's actually what you're going to be doing,
you're pushing with.
- [Dan] It's twisting.
I think this is achieving the goal of making you look good.
- [Charlie] Oh yeah.
- I love that you're just it letting me die here also.
(laughing)
- Do you want a lifeline?
In, right above the spine, and then it is just a push.
- All right, this one's gonna go
to famous sushi chefs, right?
- Oh yeah, absolutely.
With your signature on it.
- I'm in the other side too which is not...
which you hate to see.
- It is a brutal thing.
Like, I mean, I'm talking six months worth of-
- And you've done a lot of butchering, right?
- No, this was my first...
(laughing)
processing job.
- This is my wife, Hannah,
we have created an eel processing assembly line.
So the next step in the process
is actually just cleaning up the filets after butterflying.
- So what do you guys usually talk about?
- Normally we're just blasting disco at the top volume.
(upbeat music)
- Again, customers can buy eels
one of three ways.
They can buy them live, they can buy them butterflied
and they can buy them smoked and ready to eat.
All right, so we've seen all of the work that goes
into getting these amazing filets.
So now it's time to see how you guys cook them.
You developed the recipe for the smoked product
like right here?
- Yeah, in this smoker in this backyard with Sara, yeah.
It is just a nine minute brine, and a 70 degree salt brine
and hardwood smoke, that is it.
- [NDan] These have been on for about three hours.
- Yup.
- Let's pop them open and have some eel.
- [Charlie] Absolutely.
- Oh my God, look at the colors, beautiful filets.
This is a beautifully smoked piece of fish.
- The smoked eel, and having that
over the cutting board, the first time,
was one of those like epiphany moments in this whole journey
of "I have to make it."
And it was kind of the real start of knowing
that this was a product I was going to make.
- Even out of the basement eels.
- Even more so, I was like, man-
- I grew, these are my basement.
- No, exactly, like I kid you not,
It was like, man, it's like one of the best fish I've had,
and I grew them in my basement.
Like, can you imagine when I like, can build a facility
and like grow this thing, how much better it's gonna get?
- Truly, I'm really excited to try it right now.
- Absolutely.
- [Dan] Should we get in?
- [Charlie] Help yourself. It should have a nice buttery-
- I usually just scrape it off the skin.
- Not for me.
- Me neither.
- The meat itself is so is so fatty and rich and luscious,
for people that haven't had it,
it's kind of like the best of the sea and the land combined.
And that's kind of what you do, I guess, right.
(laughs)
- Well played.
- Well played, thank you.
- Yeah, I just wanna thank you guys so much
for having me up here and show me
all the stages of this thing.
It's incredible how much labor and work it is
to get from the ocean to here.
I mean, for me, it's worth it.
- For us. It's worth it too.
- Yeah, no, exactly.
- I joke around my entire job, is making round things flat.
- Does that joke bring the house down?
(laughs)
- No, my mom doesn't even laugh at that joke.