Eat the story
Not long ago, I was having dinner with Nā Kai ‘Ewalu, the Native Hawaiian subsistence fishing collective I work with, when someone on my team said that I look like a vegetarian.
As a biology PhD student at Stanford, it’s true that my research has made me think twice about eating animals — but not in the way most people would assume. My title “Eat the Story” is inspired by Uncle Mac Poepoe, an elder and fisher from Molokai whom I’ve worked with since 2018. Whenever I hear the prompt “Tell us a story about”— the first echo in my head is Uncle Mac’s voice saying, “Don’t tell me the story, let me taste the story.”
During the early months of working with Uncle Mac, we agreed on a project that has since grown into the subject of my PhD thesis, learning about an undescribed toxin (a poisonous substance that’s not yet fully identified by scientists) located in the head of a Hawaiian fish called weke. In this case a “sampling” trip is a fishing trip that happens at night, chest-deep in water. Three people are standing in front of me, and we form a line along a net to check for fish. I’m at the back, also tugging along our cooler, which is atop a small inflatable dinghy. Quiet is one of the fishing rules; otherwise the fish will hear. So the only thing you do hear is the plucking of the net and the slap of fish finding the cooler.
That is, until I hear Uncle Mac, at the front of the line, give a low sort of huff. Seconds pass, and then Uncle Kama, his cousin standing behind him, emits a slightly louder grunt. Another pause and then Keli’i, Uncle Kama’s grandson, lets out a barely muffled uuuuughhh right in front of me … and I don’t have time to think about what it means before I feel it. Something leathery and rough — in my head I picture it as a paw — brushes across my ankles. And, into the quiet, “fish-sneaking” calm of the night, I let out a very loud scream.
Back to silence. “You OK?” I hear Uncle Mac ask in a low voice from the front. I want to shout, “WHAT WAS THAT?!” But whatever it was is gone, and no one else is saying anything, so I manage a little squeak, “Yep,” and we carry on.
A few hours later, we return with our haul: a huge silver o’io, several reddish yellow snappers, half a dozen purple-brown slipper lobsters, and a pile of weke, the fish I’m studying. I’m desperate to ask about the leathery paw, but it’s time to crack out my sampling equipment and it’s also time for a barbecue. Joyful chaos. Fish are passed around to family and neighbors. There’s steaming, frying, grilling, laughing. Uncle Mac and I step away to put the samples of weke head and guts in falcon tubes, double-wrapped for their FedEx journey to the lab. Then, we head right back to the kitchen.
Some of the weke bodies are pan fried; the o’io are scraped raw with a spoon and mixed with spices. While I’m massaging the o’io fish paste, Uncle Mac shows me a container of pinkish salt and says, “I mixed this with the red dirt from here. Taste it; it’s spicy.” It is mouth-burning. I spend the night telling everyone how amazed I am that dirt can be spicy! Eventually, Uncle Mac comes up behind me and says, “No, no, that was a joke. I also added cayenne pepper.”
This is how it goes with my sampling now: The fish are eaten; anything extra is used to fertilize the plants. And my science, instead of being the spotlight of the story, is a working piece of a much bigger pā’ina (food gathering).
The message to the fisher who catches the biggest fish or to the scientist who finds the toxin in the head of the fish is this: “Don’t tell me the story, let me taste it.” It is a call to share in the process, share in the results, and do science in a way that yields tangible benefits for everyone.
That night, during the pā’ina, I tried asking, “Uncle Mac, was there a ‘turtle’ there in the water with us?” He just mumbled “maybe” and kept chopping the chives. It wasn’t until years later at another gathering with Nā Kai ‘Ewalu that I hear him retell the story and say that the “thing” was a lupe (a stingray). Stingrays can kill people with their barb, but they are also protectors for some (as in the mo’olelo of Lupe Kia’i Nui, the stingrays protect fish in the fish pond). I remembered the feeling of the “paw” brushing past me — only this time I understood it as a sign from another member of our wider team — the ancestors and the ecosystem taking part in our research I hadn’t recognized back then.
As a scientist working in a culture that is not my own, the tagline “eat the story” has been an invitation not only to study a system but to participate in it. Business people talk about the importance of having “skin in the game” for meaningful decision-making. During my time working with Nā Kai ‘Ewalu, they showed me that effective collaboration depends on going a step further: Eat the game, put the game in your skin. For me, it means connecting not just to my work but to the place where I work, the animals I am working with, the culture and the different ways of knowing; this goes deeper than skin.
The next time you hear someone say, “Tell the story,” I hope it now also makes sense to think, “Eat the story.” Then think of the stories in our lives that we are telling and the ones that we can taste.
1There is a red dirt called ‘alae that is mixed with pa’akai (salt) as seasoning. It does add a slight spicy flavor in some cases.
2Also known as hīhīmanu in some parts of Hawai’i.
This story was originally shared as part of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars weekly Storytelling program and has been adapted for print.
Marina Luccioni (2024 cohort) is a Knight-Hennessy scholar pursuing a PhD in biology at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. Marina aspires to improve our understanding of mental health and to support community-based marine management, creating a research process that interfaces knowledge and methods from local, Indigenous, and conventional academic sources.
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
