EELS!

WARNING: Anybody who doesn't like snakes should have this post dictated to them, because the eels are exceedingly snakelike, only they taste way better.

So from Moncton we traveled forth to an eel processing facility that I had cold contacted and received really a welcoming response. We pulled up at the plant and met Mitch, American born, Philidelphia obsessed, and all around awesome dude. He runs the paper side of the eel plant, a sister to a company in Philidelphia. He is hands down one of the most hospitable guys we've met on the trip thus far. After a brief scan of what we were like and what we were doing, we got to work at the plant, and he even housed us at his home in Cape Spear. I'm consistently humbled by the fact that this guy took two total strangers into his business and home, and let us work and play all over the place, even helping us to further steps in the journey. It was so awesome a place we even came back after visiting PEI. An uncommon step in our usually forward driven journey.

The crew at the plant is really tight, fathers and daughters, wives, friends, boyfriends, and all manner of inextricably linked people. They plant is also hugely busy at this time of year, which was perfect, because our help was needed and useful. Always good to feel useful. They are the only eel processor in New Brunswick, and go through a whole shiteload of eel. Around half a million to a million tonnes. That's a lot of animals. Basically their operation runs off on buying and selling. They buy from the fisherman, bring to the plant, grade the eels upon size, and then send them all over the world. Japan, Korea, China, Belgium, Germany, you name it. It seems like everyone eats eels except North Americans.

We helped doing all sorts of jobs. From packing, freezing, grading, loading, even helping on the trucks and the oyster lease. That's another arm of the business. Because eels is currently a precarious business due to all sorts of things, oysters are a great pillar to lean on. They own a further half million oysters, with plans to expand. They also buy, grade and sell oysters. While Fabian went out eel buying in PEI on one of the trucks, I went oyster buying. It's pretty fun stuff, and we even visited the head of the New Brunswick shellfish growers association. He's a pretty interesting guy with a lot to say on the subject, but he's also really young, which is good, because it means there is a young face on the oysters of N.B.

Either way, we worked a lot, and had a whole lot of shenanigans. Definitely a really cool experience.