The 2023 striped bass season has officially begun on the Outer Cape. It may seem like we’ve been waiting a long time, but the truth is they are way ahead of schedule — two or three weeks ahead of what is typical around here.

Capt. Vaughn Cabral went out on a reconnaissance mission this week and found a large school of bass between Long Point and the Pamet, and they were hungry as well, he reported. He caught some nice-sized slot fish. When he went back the next day, they were still there and, again, he found keepers within the new rules: between 28 and 31 inches.

The bay is loaded with mackerel at the moment, which is probably what is holding the bass there. Water temperatures are in the 50s now, too, so everything is in place for things to get going.

I’ve had no reports yet from Race Point or beyond, but the stripers are more than likely there. As more people get out and try to find them, we will get a clearer picture of what’s happening on the back side. Right now, though, the bay is hot.

The arrival of the stripers gives a nudge to the local charter fishing fleet. Everyone has sprung into action, finishing up all the things they need to do to get ready for the upcoming season. The sounds of sanding and engine tune-ups are in the air, and people are caulking and painting. With boats, the work is never-ending; there is always something to fix or replace. A saltwater environment is harsh.

Capt. Nico of Cape Tip’n is already in the water and ready to go. Capt. Rich has one of his Beth Ann boats in the water doing private whale watching trips. Capt. Russ of the Lisa Z and Capt. Dave of the Ginny G both say they will be fully operational by Memorial Day weekend, and the Cee-Jay starts her trips on May 20.

You may wonder what it’s like for those of us who take people fishing here. There’s a competitive spirit to fishing. But I’d say collaboration runs deeper. Collectively, we skippers probably have a couple of hundred years of experience on the water. The fact is, we all work together to help each other find the fish.

Flounder fishing is starting to pick up down on the south end of Billingsgate Shoals. Meanwhile, haddock fishing has been a bit slow on Stellwagen Bank.

The Dolphin Fleet is running whale watching trips every day now. The humpbacks have completed their journey north from the Caribbean, where birthing and breeding is done, and are here to fatten up and feed on the enormous quantities of baitfish we are blessed to have in our waters.

The right whales have departed, according to the latest aerial surveys, and are continuing their migration up to the Bay of Fundy. Because of that, the 10-mile-an-hour coastwide speed limit and ban on setting trap gear have been lifted for the season. This is welcome news for the lobstermen as well as the high-speed ferries. And this, too, has happened earlier than usual, at least by a few days.

Does the fact that everything in our local waters is happening earlier in the year indicate an inevitable trend due to our warming seas? Time will tell, but my guess is yes. I also believe we are going to see more and more species of marine life showing up from the south — fish we have never seen here before. Stay tuned and stay ready for the unexpected.

The striped bass have arrived, and schoolie-size fish, which typically lead the charge north, are all the way up into the Race. That would indicate the keepers are probably not far behind.

And keeper-size fish have already been taken in the Canal and along the south shore to Chatham.

That’s the good news. Unfortunately, it comes with some bad news as well. Effective this season, striped bass limits will be changing again, as on May 3 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board announced that they had unexpectedly voted on an emergency measure to lower the upper end of the striped bass size slot to 31 inches. It was 35 inches.

The 31-inch maximum size applies to “all existing recreational fishery regulations where a higher (or no) maximum size applies, excluding the Chesapeake Bay trophy fisheries,” the emergency declaration states. “All other recreational size limits, possession limits, seasons, gear restrictions, and spawning protections remain in place. Jurisdictions are required to implement compliant measures as soon as possible.”

The measure was approved 15 to 1, with only the member from New Jersey voting against it.

Each state has 30 days to implement the new rule. Once they do, all East Coast states will have the exact same striped bass regulations, which hasn’t been the case in a very long time. The new limit will stay in effect for 180 days, through Oct. 28, at which time a review will take place to figure out how things have shaken out.

Because this was deemed an emergency action, there wasn’t a period allowed for public comments. In the opinion of this writer, the only thing this new law is going to create is more floaters than ever when there is a good bite going on. I do not understand the rationale behind this decision: currently we have migratory fish arriving in our waters and, at the same time a couple of hundred miles to our south, they are still catching bass really well. This tells me the size of the body of fish is very large.

Although I think the move is a real head-scratcher, it is what it is. We will all comply or suffer the consequences.

Some very large bluefish are in Long Island Sound and off Montauk Point way ahead of schedule. It will be interesting to see if and when they show up here. Typically, we start seeing the bluefish in mid-June, so stay tuned.

Captain Vaughn Cabral of the Cee-Jay went for a ride to see what’s around in our neighborhood and found a lot of big fat mackerel right in Provincetown Harbor. Mackerel can be taken year-round. Last year, however, the mackerel initially came into our harbor, then left for Stellwagen Bank, and pretty much stayed there all summer.

There is a 20-fish-per-person limit this year on mackerel, by the way. If you’ve ever fished for them, you know you can catch 20 mackerel in less than 10 minutes. I guess there’s another rule I don’t understand.

I remember asking the old-timers when they thought the first spring stripers would appear. The answer was always the same: “Stripers show up when the lilacs start blooming.”

My fishing friends and I spent many an evening in Wellfleet shucking wild oysters for meat. In the 1970s, there was hardly a local restaurant offering fresh winter oysters on the menu.

Shucking would add $7.50 a pint to our regular salaries — enough to offset skyrocketing gas and heating oil prices. And while we worked, we would make guesses about water temperatures here and in the Chesapeake Bay, where most of our striper population winters over. Interpolating all those guesses, we’d arrive at when we might catch our first stripers of the season.

Today, that ritual is a mostly solitary one. Socially inspired guesswork and opinions aren’t involved anymore, because anyone can take a quick peek online to see what the 20-odd striper-oriented websites are saying about the state of the fish’s annual migration. We can chart the locations of fish by size, have instant access to water temperatures on every inch of coastline, and see graphs that show historical warming-water trends as well as precise bell curves of fish populations and striper movements over the past 20 years.

The charts are pretty clear: stripers migrate earlier than they once did. The old-timers’ predictions remain pretty accurate, though. If you look at current plant blooming charts, also available online, you see the reason. Temperatures are up everywhere.

Look up “water temperatures on Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine.” Even a cursory scan of what’s happening around the Cape can cast a shadow over the impending joy of spring. The cold, hard truth is that the sea around us is warming faster than pretty much all the other seas of the world — 99 percent of all the global oceans, in fact. This doesn’t foretell the end of the coming striper run. But it does explain many dramatic changes to marine life on Cape Cod.

In the past 15 years alone, the water temperature in the Gulf of Maine has risen more than four degrees. That may not sound like much, but it’s likely the biggest change since the last glacial retreat 17,000 years ago. It’s the reason Cape Cod Bay was filled last summer with small bonito, a fish that until recently was considered a tropical or semi-tropical species. It’s the cause of the gradual disappearance of local lobsters, and the growing number of blue crabs. It’s why white marlin, another tropical species, is now being caught here and why black sea bass, until very recently a virtual stranger to Cape waters, is now common enough that head boats regularly take their clients out to catch them.

Contemplating the changes already well underway while trying to muster up anticipatory joy over wading out at Lieutenant Island and the Herring River to catch my first bass can give me the climate change blues.

But then I think about the extraordinary history of striped bass. In the late ’70s, stripers were so few in number here that scientists feared the stock would never come back. Their traditional spawning grounds in the Chesapeake and the Hudson River were so toxic virtually no fish were surviving the first year of life. That was the inflection point that resulted in the formation of good multi-state management and estuary cleanup programs.

Fifteen years later, the striper population was deemed fully restored.

The first ancestors of striped bass evolved in freshwater ponds and rivers 130 million years ago, well before the last three Ice Ages. When the glaciers formed, the more southerly stripers survived. As ice sheets receded and sea levels rose, many inland lakes and rivers became part of tidal ecosystems, where salmon, herring, white perch, smelt, shad, and other anadromous species thrived, able to spawn in fresh water while spending most of their adult lives foraging in the food-filled sea.

Today’s stripers begin migrating northward as water temperatures rise to the mid-40s. The first to head north are small, immature “schoolies.” Larger stripers typically winter offshore in the deeper waters of the mid-Atlantic. These larger fish enter their spawning grounds and lay their eggs in fresh water when water temperatures reach the mid-60s. After spawning, the larger fish also head northwards, resulting in two distinct phases of the spring run, with the first migration of smaller fish taking place in mid-April and the larger fish arriving a month later.

Today, the striper population is at a low but stable size. The most obvious evidence of the continued resiliency of the species is how far north they now live. Bass now overwinter in estuaries such as the Herring River and are known to be spawning in Maine’s York River and even in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Compared to the 100-million-year survival of the striper, our own million-year existence seems downright puny. Maybe the question is not whether the striper has the resiliency to survive. Human survival seems by far the more dubious question.