At Buzzfeed (Yes, Buzzfeed. Yes, I know.) Peter Andrey Smith has written a fascinating, long-form story about the American/Asian eel industry, eel life cycles, and where your sushi roll really comes from. Turns out, like pandas, eels don’t breed well in captivity. So, in order for farmers in Japan, Korea, and China to raise eels for markets in both Asia and the U.S., they first have to get a hold of large quantities of sort-of preteen eels, known as elvers. The elvers come from Maine, where a pound of the live creatures can fetch thousands of dollars and elver dealers engage in turf battles and drive around with Glocks in their pickup trucks.