It’s strange, given our warming climate, but the ocean water temperatures off our shores are still running in the low to mid 40s — that’s cold for this time of year. And it’s the case across the Northeast, from New Jersey all the way to Maine. By now, the waters to the south of us should be solidly in the 50s, and we should be approaching that mark.
I believe we are right now under the influence of a Labrador current that has shifted a little west, keeping us in colder water from the north. If you read the story my Indie colleague William von Herff wrote two weeks ago with help from the kids at the Provincetown Schools, you know about the “cold pulse” that’s made the ecosystem more chaotic and water temperature fluctuations more shocking to fish and other marine species. That may also explain what’s going on. In any case, I’ve lost my bet on the stripers arriving by May 1.
Overall, statistically speaking, the Gulf of Maine has been warming faster than any other body of water on Earth. The gulf set consecutive high records for the warmest years ever in 2021 and 2022. Then, last year, although the waters off New England had another warm-up year, the precipitous rise seemed to slow. The gulf’s sea surface average temperature last year was 51.5 degrees, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, making that year the gulf’s 12th warmest on record. But the previous year had been the fifth warmest. The fact that this is the third year of a decline offers a little good news to those involved in the Gulf of Maine’s multi-billion-dollar seafood industry.
Speaking of bass, The Mass. Div. of Marine Fisheries has come up with a new way of measuring a fish to see if it is a keeper or not. It’s kind of an odd maneuver and not one I’ve seen or heard of before, but here goes: They want us to take the fish’s tail and squeeze it together top to bottom, then take a measurement from the lower jaw point to the tip of the tail. I have no idea who thought of this or why, but it is the new required way to measure a striped bass, and the good news is that we actually gain roughly a half to three quarters of an inch on the length doing it this way. That would mean that what used to come in as a 27¼-inch fish could now conceivably meet the minimum size of 28 inches — making it a legal keeper.
Whale watching has been outstanding, with North Atlantic right whales skim feeding plankton along Herring Cove and humpback whales feeding around Race Point. Some lucky whale watchers even got to observe sei whales recently. Now is a really good time to head out with the Dolphin Fleet and spend a day on the ocean observing these newly arrived whales doing their thing. Watching whales from an uncrowded boat before the summer tourists arrive is an especially unforgettable experience.
