Tanaki on the Shore

MIGRATION. The instinct of animals traveling vast distances to reproduce and survive is a central imperative of nature. Biologist David Tanaki arrives at a research station on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to study the movement and navigation of species in the Chesapeake, especially the uncharted path of the American eel, whose life cycle begins and ends in the Sargasso Sea. Taken up by the lovely, mischievous Yamaguchi sisters, who run their family’s fishing fleet, he is enticed into the culture of his ancestors and convinced to try some strange sushi. Haunted by a lover and colleague whose intuitive methods sprung out of the very mysteries of animal instincts, Tanaki’s own meticulous research casts him into a net of politic intrigue. When his station director seems to obstruct his research in the salt grass meadows of the lower estuary, Tanaki must confront the reasons why and break out of his cloistered heart and mind. Tanaki on the Shore is about the bridges between insight and action, the past and the present, as Tanaki navigates between two women, an environmental lawyer from Baltimore, and a Native American activist indigenous to the Shore, who are among his allies in the struggle.