Erik’s class ring forms both the inciting incident of the novel and its climax. Cameron first discovers it with his mother’s old things and becomes convinced it’s a way out of his money problems. The ring says “EELS,” which he takes to be a sign of the school mascot or, later, the original owner’s marine interests. The reader learns that the letters actually stand for Erik’s full initials.

The ring becomes a driving force in each of the main characters’ lives at one point: for Cameron, he believes it can bring him to his estranged father and a financial payout. Although his story doesn’t play out in the way he expects, the ring actually does fulfill this end as it brings him together with his lineage and his newfound grandmother. For Marcellus, it becomes the focal point of the final stretch of his quest to reunite Tova with her only living family. He braves the wolf eels, the symbol of his trauma and captivity, to reclaim it. Inadvertently, it’s his retrieval of the ring that leads to him being brought back to the sea.

When Tova finally does receive the ring from Marcellus, she sees it as a symbol of everything she lost and the knowledge that she still has family somewhere in the world.