.For Aquariums, the Small Fry Swept North Become a Big Catch
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Fishing season has begun in northern waters, not for prize tuna or marlin, but for tropical fish small enough to fit on an angler’s fingertip. Luckily, the fishermen here are seeking neither trophies nor dinner.
From July to late October, the Gulf Stream carries these young, dime-size reef dwellers from tropical waters near the Florida Keys and the western Bahamas, and abandons them along the coastline of Long Island. In ichthyologists’ lingo, they are known as orphans, strays, expatriates. For an increasing number of aquariums, they are also the catch of the day.
Taking a cue from deep-sea fishermen who track Atlantic Ocean currents, aquariums in the Northeast have recently started to collect more — and more kinds — of the tropical fish in nearby waters. Catching the fish up north is cheaper and less disruptive to ocean ecosystems than trapping them in the tropics. And the collections are rescue missions of a sort, because these Gulf Stream travelers are unlikely to survive the winter.
It is possible the practice is increasing because there are more fish. “It’s gathered a lot more steam,” said Joseph Yaiullo, curator of Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, N.Y., which, along with the New England Aquarium in Boston and the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, has been catching fish abandoned by the Gulf Stream to some extent for decades. Recently the aquariums have started to collect them in greater numbers, representing a bigger portion of the fish they put on display.
The fish are more abundant, said Don Harrington, curator for fish and invertebrates at Mystic Aquarium. “Before the last 10 years we would have never seen so many animals coming up in the Gulf Stream.”
Scientists do not know why the fish numbers seem to have increased. But some species that are vulnerable to cold shock, like the Atlantic croaker, appear to be expanding their range and ability to survive in the Northeast because of climate change, said Kenneth W. Able, a professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, and the director of the university's Marine Field Station.
“We think it’s correlated with the generally warmer temperatures we are experiencing,” Dr. Able said. “Some species may be moving further north because we are having milder winters. Secondly, more fish may be surviving further north because winter temperatures are warmer.”
What scientists do know is that each summer the Gulf Stream carries millions of larval and newborn tropical fish bred in warm Caribbean waters and deposits them sporadically in rocky coves and eelgrass beds off the Northeast coast.
The Gulf Stream travels like a meandering river, pulling ocean water from the Gulf of Mexico along the Eastern Seaboard and toward Britain. As it snakes through the Atlantic, whirlpools of warm water the size of multiple city blocks spin off from the current’s northern front and sweep toward the shore, taking tropical fish with them.
“It’s essentially like carrying a bucket of water from Florida to New York, with everything that’s in it,” Mr. Yaiullo said. The Gulf Stream can travel up to three and a half miles per hour, transporting water at a rate that is about 2,000 times the flow of the Mississippi River. Young, pelagic fish and fish eggs caught up in it cannot escape.
Long Island, with its arm that juts into the Atlantic, catches the fish on its south shore. Aquariums as far south as Baltimore travel here to replenish their exhibits.
Biologists collect Gulf Stream orphans in two ways: sweeping up fish by dragging nets along the shore or scuba diving with small hand-held nets to catch darting angel fish in the crevices of rocks and jetties. Aquariums must apply for state permits and report how many of each species they collect.
Todd Gardner, a biologist at Atlantis Marine World, has been snatching up stranded fish here since he was 6, when his father told him they could not afford the tropical fish at the local pet store. He did not envision that he would one day catch them in the thousands for aquarium exhibits.
On a recent weekday, Mr. Gardner, with his sweep of golden hair corralled into a ponytail half the length of his back, waded waist-deep into Shinnecock Bay with his team, dragging a 50-foot-long seine net along the shore at low tide to gather the young spotfin butterflyfish and amber jacks that signal the start of the Gulf Stream season.
“In September, it’s not uncommon for us to get a hundred or more butterflyfish in one haul of the seine net,” Mr. Gardner said. “Some days, I go out and it’s like I’m in the Caribbean.”
During last year’s season, Atlantis Marine World gathered around 2,500 fish — about 25 species — some for the aquarium’s exhibits and others to give to zoos and aquariums around the country.
Catching tropical fish in the North has certain benefits.
“These are zero-impact collections,” said Brian Nelson, senior aquarist at the New England Aquarium. “These animals aren’t going to make it through their first year. If we go to the Bahamas, we’ve got to spread our collecting efforts out to not impact the breeding sites.”
Gulf Stream fish are not likely to survive long in northern waters, said Ken Lindeman, a marine biologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, not only because of the colder water but also because they have not adapted to the region’s habitats. The dark brown and green algae characteristic of these coastlines do not camouflage tropical fish like vibrantly colored coral reefs do.
“They’re gaudy and they’re obvious,” said Mr. Nelson, so if they do not die from the cold, they will be easy prey.
The practice also makes it easier for aquariums to find species that are elusive or hard to trap when they are adults. For example, aquariums without Gulf Stream fish rarely exhibit the snowy grouper — a puffy, brown fish with white speckles — or the blue spotted coronet fish, a long-nosed creature resembling an eel that grows up to eight feet long and as thick as a wrist.
As “juveniles,” tropical fish adjust better to life in an aquarium, Mr. Yaiullo said. “Kids adapt to new environments a lot better than adults. Fish are the same way, when they’re young they feed better and get along with the other fish in the tank better.”
Still, many young tropical fish captured up north do not survive. The New England Aquarium estimates that almost 40 percent of the butterflyfish they collected last year died because of parasite or bacterial infections, or because they were inadvertently “damaged” by divers during their capture.
Mr. Nelson, a self-described “coral reef geek,” is experimenting with medicines to treat fish infections to improve their odds for survival. In an aquarium, Gulf Stream fish could live for up to 20 years, depending on the species and how well they adjust to the tank.
About 10 percent of the 700 animals — and about 8 percent of the species — in the New England Aquarium’s 200,000-gallon Caribbean reef tank are Gulf Stream orphans. The aquarium expects to increase that share to about 25 percent over the next few years, Mr. Nelson said. Atlantis Marine World plans to keep up its current pace of collecting tropical strays, but has not kept track of what percentage of its fish come from nearby waters.
Adopting young Gulf Stream orphans can also pose unexpected problems. Bill Murphy, a New England Aquarium biologist, said that when the aquarium introduced orphan needlefish in its largest tank a few years ago, a barracuda began eating them. Divers had to chase the barracuda around the tank and feed it extra food for days to give the needlefish time to learn to avoid the hunt. “You have to remember that when you collect fish that are this small, they lack life experience,” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s a learning process for all of us.”
NYT
Nothing to see here, move along.
From July to late October, the Gulf Stream carries these young, dime-size reef dwellers from tropical waters near the Florida Keys and the western Bahamas, and abandons them along the coastline of Long Island. In ichthyologists’ lingo, they are known as orphans, strays, expatriates. For an increasing number of aquariums, they are also the catch of the day.
Taking a cue from deep-sea fishermen who track Atlantic Ocean currents, aquariums in the Northeast have recently started to collect more — and more kinds — of the tropical fish in nearby waters. Catching the fish up north is cheaper and less disruptive to ocean ecosystems than trapping them in the tropics. And the collections are rescue missions of a sort, because these Gulf Stream travelers are unlikely to survive the winter.
It is possible the practice is increasing because there are more fish. “It’s gathered a lot more steam,” said Joseph Yaiullo, curator of Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, N.Y., which, along with the New England Aquarium in Boston and the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, has been catching fish abandoned by the Gulf Stream to some extent for decades. Recently the aquariums have started to collect them in greater numbers, representing a bigger portion of the fish they put on display.
The fish are more abundant, said Don Harrington, curator for fish and invertebrates at Mystic Aquarium. “Before the last 10 years we would have never seen so many animals coming up in the Gulf Stream.”
Scientists do not know why the fish numbers seem to have increased. But some species that are vulnerable to cold shock, like the Atlantic croaker, appear to be expanding their range and ability to survive in the Northeast because of climate change, said Kenneth W. Able, a professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, and the director of the university's Marine Field Station.
“We think it’s correlated with the generally warmer temperatures we are experiencing,” Dr. Able said. “Some species may be moving further north because we are having milder winters. Secondly, more fish may be surviving further north because winter temperatures are warmer.”
What scientists do know is that each summer the Gulf Stream carries millions of larval and newborn tropical fish bred in warm Caribbean waters and deposits them sporadically in rocky coves and eelgrass beds off the Northeast coast.
The Gulf Stream travels like a meandering river, pulling ocean water from the Gulf of Mexico along the Eastern Seaboard and toward Britain. As it snakes through the Atlantic, whirlpools of warm water the size of multiple city blocks spin off from the current’s northern front and sweep toward the shore, taking tropical fish with them.
“It’s essentially like carrying a bucket of water from Florida to New York, with everything that’s in it,” Mr. Yaiullo said. The Gulf Stream can travel up to three and a half miles per hour, transporting water at a rate that is about 2,000 times the flow of the Mississippi River. Young, pelagic fish and fish eggs caught up in it cannot escape.
Long Island, with its arm that juts into the Atlantic, catches the fish on its south shore. Aquariums as far south as Baltimore travel here to replenish their exhibits.
Biologists collect Gulf Stream orphans in two ways: sweeping up fish by dragging nets along the shore or scuba diving with small hand-held nets to catch darting angel fish in the crevices of rocks and jetties. Aquariums must apply for state permits and report how many of each species they collect.
Todd Gardner, a biologist at Atlantis Marine World, has been snatching up stranded fish here since he was 6, when his father told him they could not afford the tropical fish at the local pet store. He did not envision that he would one day catch them in the thousands for aquarium exhibits.
On a recent weekday, Mr. Gardner, with his sweep of golden hair corralled into a ponytail half the length of his back, waded waist-deep into Shinnecock Bay with his team, dragging a 50-foot-long seine net along the shore at low tide to gather the young spotfin butterflyfish and amber jacks that signal the start of the Gulf Stream season.
“In September, it’s not uncommon for us to get a hundred or more butterflyfish in one haul of the seine net,” Mr. Gardner said. “Some days, I go out and it’s like I’m in the Caribbean.”
During last year’s season, Atlantis Marine World gathered around 2,500 fish — about 25 species — some for the aquarium’s exhibits and others to give to zoos and aquariums around the country.
Catching tropical fish in the North has certain benefits.
“These are zero-impact collections,” said Brian Nelson, senior aquarist at the New England Aquarium. “These animals aren’t going to make it through their first year. If we go to the Bahamas, we’ve got to spread our collecting efforts out to not impact the breeding sites.”
Gulf Stream fish are not likely to survive long in northern waters, said Ken Lindeman, a marine biologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, not only because of the colder water but also because they have not adapted to the region’s habitats. The dark brown and green algae characteristic of these coastlines do not camouflage tropical fish like vibrantly colored coral reefs do.
“They’re gaudy and they’re obvious,” said Mr. Nelson, so if they do not die from the cold, they will be easy prey.
The practice also makes it easier for aquariums to find species that are elusive or hard to trap when they are adults. For example, aquariums without Gulf Stream fish rarely exhibit the snowy grouper — a puffy, brown fish with white speckles — or the blue spotted coronet fish, a long-nosed creature resembling an eel that grows up to eight feet long and as thick as a wrist.
As “juveniles,” tropical fish adjust better to life in an aquarium, Mr. Yaiullo said. “Kids adapt to new environments a lot better than adults. Fish are the same way, when they’re young they feed better and get along with the other fish in the tank better.”
Still, many young tropical fish captured up north do not survive. The New England Aquarium estimates that almost 40 percent of the butterflyfish they collected last year died because of parasite or bacterial infections, or because they were inadvertently “damaged” by divers during their capture.
Mr. Nelson, a self-described “coral reef geek,” is experimenting with medicines to treat fish infections to improve their odds for survival. In an aquarium, Gulf Stream fish could live for up to 20 years, depending on the species and how well they adjust to the tank.
About 10 percent of the 700 animals — and about 8 percent of the species — in the New England Aquarium’s 200,000-gallon Caribbean reef tank are Gulf Stream orphans. The aquarium expects to increase that share to about 25 percent over the next few years, Mr. Nelson said. Atlantis Marine World plans to keep up its current pace of collecting tropical strays, but has not kept track of what percentage of its fish come from nearby waters.
Adopting young Gulf Stream orphans can also pose unexpected problems. Bill Murphy, a New England Aquarium biologist, said that when the aquarium introduced orphan needlefish in its largest tank a few years ago, a barracuda began eating them. Divers had to chase the barracuda around the tank and feed it extra food for days to give the needlefish time to learn to avoid the hunt. “You have to remember that when you collect fish that are this small, they lack life experience,” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s a learning process for all of us.”
NYT
Nothing to see here, move along.
posted by madtom at 12:16 AM
1 Comments:
angelfish care
nice blog.. liked it very much....can someone give me some other related blog address..???
neways appreciated..!!!
Post a Comment
<< Home