The striped bass are getting a little closer to our waters as we finally get some warmer spring weather. The canal remains quiet, but I am hearing about catches in Rhode Island as well as the east end of Long Island Sound. I am going to go out on a limb here and predict the first wave of migratory bass will arrive in our waters on May 1.
There are currently a whole bunch of right whales in Cape Cod Bay, with many hanging around the east end of the Cape Cod Canal. Last week, when one entered the canal, it was briefly closed to all traffic. According to a Center for Coastal Studies announcement on April 10, they had at that point identified 180 individual whales in and around the bay — almost half of the entire population of these animals. Then, on April 17, researchers spotted another previously uncounted mother-calf pair, meaning that 6 of the 11 calves known to have been born this year are in our waters.
The whales are here for the plankton bloom we get in the bay at this time of year as they continue their trek to the nutrient-rich waters to our north. So, grab your binoculars and head to the Herring Cove parking lot to observe these magnificent endangered creatures skim feeding along the surface.
You might not know this, but our waters are also known for their abundance of squid. We have quite a robust squid fishery in our harbor. People come from as far away as Boston to catch them during the summer. NOAA is now beginning to work with the commercial squid fishing industry to better understand how ocean conditions and processes influence the variability of shortfin squid catches in the mid-Atlantic region.
The shortfin squid fishery is extremely underrated but highly valuable. In the past 10 years, the annual value of this fishery ranged from $1.1 million to a recent high of $27.3 million. Despite the importance of this species to the seafood market, little is known about squid life patterns and how sea conditions and processes affect their daily movements and seasonal migrations. This is mainly due to the fact that squid live less than a year, spend parts of their lives far offshore, and have migratory patterns that simply do not overlap with current NOAA oceanographic surveys.
The NOAA project aligns itself with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which was designed to ensure the longterm biological and economic sustainability of all marine fisheries, including squid. The idea is that a more in-depth understanding of the squid’s life history and oceanographic influences can guide ways to meet the Act’s objectives to prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks to maintain a safe and sustainable supply, and protect the habitat squid need to spawn, breed, feed, and grow to maturity. We’ll follow this new squid project with interest.
On a personal note, the crew of the CeeJay were deeply saddened to learn of the sudden death of 15-year-old angler Daniel Martinez. We’d gotten to know Daniel over many years, as he and his sister, Gabriela, were regulars fishing with us when they and their mom, Eileen, were here from western Massachusetts for part of each summer.
Daniel had a genuine passion for fishing that is rare among young people today, when so many would rather pretend to fish using an online app than go out in a boat to catch a fish. But that was not Daniel. Our mate, Tammy, had a special connection with him, and she took a lot of pleasure in teaching him tricks of the trade, which he absorbed like a sponge. To see the joy on his face when he landed a nice striper or bluefish was priceless, but he fished hard every moment on the trip, no matter what.
