it was written this way to capture the mystery of the eel, and reflect the tone of the book that is being reviewed.

The purpose of the piece is to provide insight and depth. Reading with full comprehension can take patience. Practice.

It is sad, tragic even, that the great writing on natural history is closed you by your own impatience.

This article is not the best of its kind, but it is very, very good. Writing that excels it would frustrate you more, in proportion to its quality. The frustration you feel reading it is a pale echo of that experienced by the myriad scientists and amateurs who puzzled in and out of decades over these questions, originally obscure but enlarged by their obdurity to have become symbolic of questions of our own existence.

Oh please. OP offered a position and asked a simple, direct question. That is customary here.

Your bloviation about great writing offers nothing except a great example of a style you won't find in the New Yorker.

It's a complaint about a long form article.

From the New Yorker!

If you don't like long form articles and you see it is the New Yorker, then don't read it.

If he wanted a quick rundown on the eel life cycle, wikipedia is one click away. That obviously wasn't the purpose of the story.