The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the lead organization federally permitted to respond to marine mammal stranding incidents, was on the scene quickly when the call came in. It was the beginning of a grueling several days and nights taking care of the dolphins. When they arrived, 5-6 animals had died. Many refloated with the incoming tide but there was danger of restranding.

The rescue was supported by interns at IFAW, over 50 trained volunteers, and partners from AmeriCorps Cape Cod and Whale and Dolphin Conservation. This dedicated group allowed them to respond simultaneously, at multiple locations and over many tidal cycles, an exhausting feat. They succeeded in guiding the dolphins to deeper water, keeping track of their movement by satellite tags on several of them, and were heartened to see them swimming with other bottlenose dolphins further offshore.

IFAW is supported by more than 250 trained volunteers who are often the first people to see a stranding event. IFAW notes that volunteers “help locate stranded animals, establish safe working areas, support veterinary assessments, assist with care, collect scientific data, and remain ready as tides and conditions change. The hours are long, the conditions are difficult, and the outcomes are not always certain. Still, the team continues because every individual life matters.”

Courtesy IFAW

It was not the first time such an event had occurred on Cape Beaches. Long before this summer’s event, a mass stranding occurred with very different results.

Pilot Whales on a Winter Beach

It was a grey blustery day in the late 1980s when word came over the police radio that pilot whales were beaching on the Cape Cod Bay side of town. The three members of the Orleans Shellfish/Harbormaster Department immediately headed to the beach. The tide was ebbing, and we could see approximately 50 of the huge mammals helpless and struggling.

The harbormaster went to get the workboat while there was still enough water to help get some of the enormous animals back into deeper water. While we waited, a crowd gathered, some to gawk but most trying to help, although no one knew what to do. Someone from the Division of Marine Fisheries had arrived and tagged some of the stranded animals.

Selecting a live animal that looked like a good candidate for survival, the Harbormaster had someone tie a tow rope around the tail fluke. He slowly inched the boat forward, towing the whale backward. When it seemed there was sufficient depth, he released the tow rope and the whale swam off.

One saved. But not for long.

In the time the whole operation had taken place, the tide had dropped substantially and there weren’t any others that could be saved. Everyone at the beach that day watched the huge multi-ton animals die on the beach. Later came the difficult discussions of what to do with them.

We learned later that “our” towed whale could not be saved, either. The animal’s blowhole is not designed for moving backward. A day or two later, it turned up on another beach several miles away, dead. It had drowned.

There were about 60 pilot whales in that incident on beaches from Dennis to Wellfleet—an area known as the “elbow” of Cape Cod. I’m not sure if any of them survived.

Herding Them Ashore

The behavior of marine animals to congregate in large groups was a welcome trait to the Native Americans, who saw them as a gift from the Creator. They hunted them from dugout canoes, working together to herd them to shore, where the entire village took part in processing them to use every part of the animal.

Colonists learned from them and took their turn at herding pilot whales to shore. At first they made use of everything, too, but whale meat went out of favor, considered unfit for consumption. Oil rendered from the greasy blanket of blubber became the prime valued product.

Pilot whales, also called “grampus” and “blackfish,” are not actually whales. They are one of the largest species in the dolphin family, and they demonstrate the same type of group behavior as other dolphins.

Stranding Network Formed

The chaotic response to the pilot whale stranding incident of the 1980s was part of the impetus to form a Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972, administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Twenty years later, NOAA formalized the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. NOAA notes that the program includes more than 120 partner organizations, including nonprofits, zoos/aquaria, universities, government agencies, and museums. They are authorized via stranding agreements or federal/tribal/state employment to respond to live and dead strandings. These groups coordinate emergency responses to sick, injured, distressed, or dead seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, and whales.

In Massachusetts, there are many organizations responsible for their role as first responders, such as the New England Aquarium. On Cape Cod there is the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS), and Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC)—to name just a few of the groups participating in the Network. Each of them maintains emergency hotline phone numbers and responds to strandings.

Cape Cod Gains Global Notoriety

Since formation of the Network, the records demonstrate that strandings, while seemingly random, happen frequently. Cape Cod is widely known as a global hotspot, sharing that distinction with Tasmania and New Zealand. IFAW reports an average of about 350 animals stranded per year, of which 50-60 are dolphins, although mass strandings of 100 animals or more are not unusual. Any of three species are generally involved: the Atlantic white-sided dolphin, (Lagenorhynchus acutus), the short‑beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), and the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

White-sided dolphins have historically been involved in large winter/spring mass events with dozens to over 100 animals, while short-beaked common dolphins often strand at the same time of year but generally in smaller groups.

Since 2000, there have been record-setting strandings for Cape Cod.

In 2002, 58 pilot whales stranded in Dennis. With enough water, 46 were refloated, but the next day they stranded again in Eastham and Wellfleet. All of them died, 18 from natural causes and 40 were euthanized. Their large multi-ton size makes it extremely difficult to help them. Physically getting them into water when they are on essentially dry sand flats is nearly impossible, especially when time is of the essence.

In early 2012, over the course of several months, more than 140 short-beaked common dolphins stranded between mid‑January and early spring. They were found along the shoreline of the “bended” arm of the Cape from Dennis to Wellfleet. Rescuers returned almost 40 dolphins to the sea, but nearly 100 died onshore that season.

In June 2024, 146 Atlantic white-sided dolphins stranded in Wellfleet. Survival techniques for dolphins are easier than for pilot whales due to their smaller size, and there were 102 survivors. The stranding was the largest mass dolphin stranding in U.S. history.

Then there was the most recent stranding in July of this year. The event was the largest known mass bottlenose dolphin stranding in the Northeast U.S./Massachusetts.

Taken together, these strandings represent the reason that Cape Cod is a global hotspot for marine animal stranding.

Why Do They Strand on Cape Cod Beaches?

The biggest question is why.

As with the turtle strandings I wrote about several months ago, Cape Cod’s hook shape and strong counter-clockwise currents have a lot to do with it. In the case of dolphins, however, it seems that the combination of a gradually sloping shoreline that extends for a great distance, coupled with the average high tidal range of 10-12 feet, is more of a factor.

These animals have their own sonar or echolocation, but it is not accurate in shallow water with soft substrate.

Consider the tide range. It’s relatively easy to imagine the scenario when you actually see the bay at high and low tide. In the photo of the rescue effort above, the woman in red standing alone behind two white buckets, appears to be approximately 5 feet and some inches tall. She is standing on bare ground that extends about a mile seaward or more, seen in the background. Six hours later, there will be over double her height of water covering the flats in the 10-12-foot tide. Six hours after that, there will be bare ground again.

A group of dolphins come into the bay, probably chasing food on an ebbing tide. Their internal sonar tells them they are in deep water but as they come closer and closer to shore, their sonar gives them false readings. They keep chasing their prey. Then they run out of enough water to keep them afloat. They may be there for hours before the tide can work its magic to get them back to safety.

Aerial view of Cape Cod Bay shoreline in Orleans with extensive sand flats at low tide extending a mile offshore.

IFAW gets a call that there has been a stranding event. They reach the site and the trained volunteers spring into action, covering the animals and guide them to deeper water if possible. If not, they carry those dolphins on stretchers they think are fit enough to survive, or bring them up the beach and transport them to a site that has deep water close to shore to prevent restranding. If they need immediate medical attention, they bring a few of the healthiest of the at-risk animals to their dolphin hospital in Orleans where they are treated and released into the water.

What used to be mainly a winter event has changed. Bottlenose dolphins have stranded before on the Cape, but in smaller numbers. What used to be a rarity for this species, which prefers warmer water temperatures, has been increasing over the past decade and occurs in the warmer months. The most recent event set a record. The two other dolphin species sometimes strand in the warmer months as well.

The Mix of Geography, Geology, and Currents

It is difficult to comprehend that a small hook-shaped peninsula on the coast of Massachusetts has such an outsized importance in so many marine occurrences. The list is long:

· Global hotspot for dolphin mass strandings and white shark aggregations;

· Not just a hotspot but world’s largest recurring annual sea turtle stranding of up to 800 endangered turtles;

· Annual feeding habitat for half the world population of highly endangered northern right whales;

· Breeding territory for threatened piping plovers and least terns.

· Biogeographic boundary between northern cold currents and southern warmer currents, although not as clear-cut as it once was with warming seas

What isn’t listed here but is of great importance is the response of volunteers to help marine animals in jeopardy in any way they can. They are truly invaluable.

At a beach on the Cape Cod Bay side, or the Atlantic Ocean side, or the Nantucket Sound side, we see the surface of a marine panorama. What takes place below the surface is an intricate web of intersecting pieces that we can only glimpse. All of it is a marvel, even when it is tragic for us to watch.

Esmeralda from Chile on left; BAP Unión from Peru on right

Sister Ships Join the Parade

Berthed all alone and magnificent on her own, was the four-masted topsail schooner (barquentine) Juan Sebastian de Elcano from Spain. It’s not just her enormous size but her history that sets her apart in many other ways.

In the 1920s, the Spanish Navy commissioned a shipyard in Cádiz, Spain, to build a state-of-the-art sail training ship, designed by renowned British naval architect Charles E. Nicholson. The hull of the Juan Sebastián de Elcano was a masterpiece—exceptionally long, stable, and sleek. She smashed numerous speed records under sail.

Nearly twenty years later, the Spanish government loved the Elcano so much that they decided they wanted an exact replica. In 1946, they ordered a sister ship to be built at the same Cádiz shipyard, using the exact same 1927 hull blueprints. This second ship was initially named the Don Juan de Austria.

On August 18, 1947, a massive, catastrophic explosion tore through a submarine depot at the Cádiz shipyard, causing a fire that leveled a huge portion of the facility. The shipyard was thrust into financial ruin, and the half-built steel hull of the new tall ship sat completely abandoned and rusting for years.

Spain had accumulated a massive, multimillion-dollar trade debt to Chile for imports during the raw post-war years. Spain offered to pay off its debt by finishing the abandoned sister ship and delivering her to the Chilean Navy.

Chile enthusiastically agreed. The hull was completed, launched in May 1953, and renamed Esmeralda, the ship we had just passed. But the ships don’t look like twins because their rigging differs. The Esmeralda is a full square-rigged ship while the Juan Sebastián de Elcano is a topsail schooner. It is that configuration that helped her speed her way to victory so many times. Both are beautiful under sail or tied to a wharf.

The Juan Sebastián de Elcano is also famous as a 10-time winner of the Boston Teapot Trophy and has clocked 2.3 million miles in her lifetime. The Boston Teapot Trophy is one of the global competitions organized by Sail Training International. It presents a trophy to the ship that covered the greatest distance under sail alone in a 124-hour time frame (approximately 5 days).

Sister ships, one from Chile and the other from Spain, both with dramatic histories, reunited in Boston.

Juan Sebastian de Elcano from Spain

Two huge barques were tied at Boston’s famous Fish Pier, the heart of Boston’s fishing industry since 1914. One ship, the Gorch Fock is from Germany, and the other, NRP Sagres, is from Portugal. And they were tied behind a present-day fishing boat, dwarfed by the two guests to the waterfront.

The two ships are also sister ships. The NRP Sagres was built at a German shipyard in 1937. She sailed as an active training vessel for Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine during the war. When the war ended, she was confiscated by the United States as a war prize, sold to Brazil, and eventually purchased by Portugal in 1961 to become their flagship. During the war, Portugal had been a neutral country, and Lisbon was the port to which people fled to get out of Germany.

After the war, because Germany had lost all its original training ships, they went back to the same shipyard in 1958. They used the exact old blueprints to build the modern Gorch Fock to replace what they had lost.

Four magnificent tall ships. Two sets of ship twins arriving from around the world. One a long-distance racing champion and her twin a survivor of a catastrophic explosion, bankruptcy, and crippling war-time debt; two others changing hands from wartime enemies to postwar peace. All of them proudly sailing into Boston. And here they were, four outstanding vessels, reunited, berthed together in a group, and floating peacefully in Boston Harbor. What a sight! Their presence and placement could not have been by accident.

Gorch Fock from Germany foreground; NRP Sagres behind her at the Boston Fish Pier

Two more full-rigged ships, the ARA Libertad from Argentina and the Amerigo Vespucci from Italy were docked together. Both are well known for different reasons.

Libertad is one of the fastest tall ships in the world. She set the world speed record for a transatlantic crossing in 1966, using sail propulsion alone. She sailed 2,059 nautical miles between Cape Race, Canada, on the eastern edge of Newfoundland, and the line between Dublin and Liverpool in just 8 days and 12 hours. It was a momentous, record-breaking blue water run that has never been beaten by a sail training ship. She is also a nine-time winner of the Boston Teapot trophy.

ARA Libertad

Amerigo Vespucci is an elegant and beautiful full-rigged ship. She was paid that compliment in 1962 when U.S. aircraft carrier USS Independence came across her in the Mediterranean and signaled “You are the most beautiful ship in the world.” That sentiment still holds true. She is black hulled with two white stripes, and rails and deck housing painted gold. She has a gilded bronze figurehead of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator and cartographer at her bow under a long and steeply angled bowsprit.

Amerigo Vespucci

Sailing Into the Future With Centuries of Maritime Experience Through Sail Training International

When the ships arrived in Boston, as they paraded through the harbor, sails mostly furled, the cadets saluted Boston by standing at attention high up on the ship’s yards. It was an impressive sight.

When the Vespucci made her circuit of the harbor, she made an indelible statement. Her cadets were lined up on the ratlines The ratlines are rope structures that allow sailors to climb up the rigging. They lined up beginning at the bottom with two rows of 4 cadets (one group above the other), one row each of 3 then 2 then 1 at the top of the mast. The mass of white uniformed cadets lined up in vertical triangles was breathtaking. It also meant that they must have climbed facing inward and turned around when they got into the proper position. I would have liked to see exactly how they executed that treacherous maneuver. But strength, dexterity, and confidence are all features of their training.

Most of the tall ships visiting Boston were training vessels, including our own, USCGC Eagle. The Coast Guard Academy requires cadets to train aboard the Eagle to learn the old ways of seamanship and navigation, and they gain an understanding of reading the wind at sea. The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis gave up similar training many years ago and concentrates on modern equipment. In many of the other countries represented, however, the ships serve as compulsory training ground for naval officers who learn those skills handed down through the generations.

Another ship that takes training responsibility very seriously is the barque INS Sudarshini from India. From first glimpse, the Sudarshini was different. She is dark blue and smaller than the huge ships we had seen. She looked somewhat well-worn, not the pristine look of the others but there was something special about her. The commentary was that she had traveled the farthest to get to Boston. Well-worn indeed! But that wasn’t all. The Sudarshini is in the midst of a historic 10-month, transoceanic voyage of 22,000 nautical miles known as the Lokayan 26 expedition. She will be visiting 13 countries and 18 ports. By the time she reached Boston, she had already covered 14,000 miles across four oceans.

Her training is focused on non-electronic nautical seamanship. Although she has modern equipment and maintains safety precautions, during training sessions her backup systems are shut off and her officers-in-training learn the ropes, literally. The training fosters “discipline, trust and teamwork in motion” for every sail that is raised, every decision that is made.

INs Sudarshini

There were many more impressive vessels that participated in Sail Boston not mentioned here. They were beautiful but it was the multi-masted tall ships that were such a draw for me.

As we completed our own journey, we were filled with both awe and admiration. All those magnificent ships were gathered here to help celebrate 250 years of the American story, a story steeped in maritime traditions. They came to historic Boston, their host city, where the contrasts of new and old mix. Their tall masts were set against a background of skyscrapers, waterfront condos, a new Seaport business district and a still-important fishing industry. They were ambassadors from their own countries, and Boston welcomed them. Seeing so many of them by water in Boston with its rich maritime heritage was the greatest thrill.

It brought me back to my childhood dreams of tall ships, the euphoria of my first experience and my own transatlantic crossings on the Royal Clipper.

What a wonderful day.

I’m not a sailor, but I love watching sailboats. And I love being aboard sailing vessels. As a little kid, massive sailing ships of yesteryear pictured in calendar art were tacked to the wall of the cottage where we spent summers. What was it like to be aboard one of them? Finding out seemed unlikely. The age of sail had passed.

In high school, I leapt at the opportunity to join a group of Sea Scouts as a guest aboard their 42’ ketch. They were moving the boat from one body of water to another, and it meant spending a portion of the trip on the ocean. Chatham Inlet, a cut through the undeveloped barrier beach, was calm that day as I recall, and we passed through it in short order and out into the Atlantic Ocean. With sails hoisted, the wind took us north to Nauset Inlet and our destination. I stayed on the deck in the bow the whole time. The movement of the boat through the water, sail above me, water all around, gliding through the water with only the wind in the sails and no motor noise, was nirvanic. The journey ended, but the euphoria lasted a lifetime.

Wikipedia: SES Nauset Ship 72, Photo by Pete Norgeot

Crossing the Atlantic

In 2002, I learned of a company called Star Clippers that had three cruising sailing ships. Their largest vessel, the Royal Clipper, a five-masted square-rigged clipper ship, conducted trans-Atlantic “repositioning” cruises twice a year, between the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. I booked a trip from Cannes, in the south of France, to Barbados. I was about to experience my childhood dream.

I had rarely been out of sight of land, and I had never traveled solo. In short, I had never done anything close to this adventure. From the moment I saw the Royal Clipper in the harbor, I knew I had made the right decision. For 25 glorious days, 10 of which were spent crossing the Atlantic, I loved every minute. I spent hours sitting on a bench in the bow, staring at the sea around me and the sails and rigging above me. It was glorious.

East to West: Cannes to Barbados

Over a decade later, I went from west to east on the Royal Clipper from Barbados to Civitavecchia, Italy . I didn’t think it could be better than the first trip, but it far exceeded my expectations. Fair winds meant that the sails were flying 9 out of 10 days crossing the Atlantic. Time stood still, and I didn’t want the magic to end.

West to East: Barbados to Civitavecchia

Sail Boston 250

Then, on Saturday, July 11, 2026, tall ships from around the world arrived in Boston. I was glued to the spectacle on TV. A few shots were taken near Castle Island at the entrance of the harbor, mobbed by people viewing the magnificent ships that came along with sails flying, but most of the commentary focused on their entry and parade through the harbor with few sails set. It didn’t matter.

Later that day, I saw an ad for a Boston Harbor cruise to see the tall ships on a Dolphin Fleet whale watch boat. They normally set out from Provincetown, but they advertised the 2-hour harbor cruises leaving from Quincy instead, a short distance from Boston. I immediately ordered tickets for the first trip on Sunday at 9:30 am.

We passed Castle Island and Logan airport and came to the Seaport District. We saw a steel gray Navy ship and the TS Patriot State, the modern non-sail training vessel of Massachusetts Maritime Academy, a school that trains people in the skills necessary for the Merchant Marine and other maritime endeavors.

Our boat cruised up the harbor, veered right, and got close to two big training ships. The first was the barque Mircea, a three-masted full-rigged vessel from Romania. Behind her was another three-masted full-rigged ship, the Dar Mlodziezy. A wonderful start to our tour of these glorious ships.

The Mircea from Romania

The Dar Mlodziezy from Poland

Present and Past Contrast Everywhere

Old and new were a constant contrast, reminders of where we came from and where we are. From the airport, Navy ship, and modern state-of-the-art training ship to the first two sail training ships seen up close, the contrasts turned out to be everywhere throughout the voyage.

One of the more poignant shots was the juxtaposition of the USCGC Eagle, the training ship of the U.S. Coast Guard, and the frigate USS Constitution, the U.S. oldest warship, docked together. Both are square-rigged tall ships, but the old ship suggests strength. She is dark hulled, massive, and wooden. She was built of heavy oak planking to withstand attacks and to shatter enemy hulls with her broadside salvos. It was the repeated lack of serious structural damage by enemy cannons that earned her the nickname of “Old Ironsides.”

The Eagle was docked in front of Old Ironsides. She is a gleaming white, steel-hulled prize of World War II, repurposed to teach modern Coast Guard cadets how to read the wind. She symbolizes confidence and excellence. Originally a Nazi naval vessel, her inaugural voyage to America in 1946 was manned by a unique, mixed crew. Untrained American sailors who lacked the skills to sail a square-rigged vessel were compelled to trust former German enemies, who taught the Americans how to handle the ship. Forced to work shoulder-to-shoulder, they famously saved the ship together when a ferocious Atlantic hurricane threatened to sink her just a day outside of New York and survival required teamwork.

USCGC Eagle and Old Ironsides – Keeping sailing traditions alive

For the entire journey I was struck by the old and new jumbled together, and nothing said it better than one group of vessels. In the foreground was a modern sailing yacht belonging to a resident of the expensive condos nearby. At the far end of the group of boats was a large corporate mega yacht.

Between the two was the gaff-rigged schooner American Eagle. Built in 1930, she was the very last auxiliary fishing schooner built in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She spent over 50 years actively trawling for cod, and haddock, in the brutal waters of the North Atlantic before being beautifully restored as a Maine windjammer cruise vessel.

Behind her was the schooner Columbia, a two-masted steel replica of a 1914 racing schooner. Next to the American Eagle was the Liberty Clipper, a steel-hulled replica of a 19th century gaff-rigged topsail schooner meaning she had a foremast rigged with square sails. She was built in 1983.

Looming over this scene was the enormous green Tobin Bridge, formerly known as the Mystic River Bridge. It was completed in 1950 and is the largest bridge in New England, spanning over two miles with a water clearance of 135 feet. It is showing its age, and planning is underway to determine its future. Any final design will require allowance for projected sea level rise and water clearance for tomorrow’s ships. Past, present, and future contrast with natural forces of climate change as a driver.

Boston’s History and Expansion into the Sea

The stretch of shoreline between Long Wharf and the Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowe’s Wharf is another area where past contrasts with present.

Long Wharf was at the heart of the economy of colonial Massachusetts and played an enormous role in the development of Boston. Its location spurred global commerce based on maritime trade that made Massachusetts an economic powerhouse. The wharf supported up to 50 ships tied up at one time—ships of the size and types we were seeing on our tour. Imagine all those magnificent ships tied up to one dock. Imagine the entire harborside waterfront lined with docks of various lengths with similar ships.

Long Wharf was 1,600 feet long then, extending far beyond the present Atlantic Avenue and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The granite-clad Custom House, which appears to be in the distance from the water, was at the water’s edge when constructed. The water was filled in to create the land of today. It’s hard to imagine now.

The Custom House has not been obscured visually by surrounding skyscrapers. It is a two-part structure. The Greek revival granite base was completed in 1849, and the clock skyscraper was completed in 1964. It remained the tallest building in Boston for 49 years.

Now, Long Wharf hosts a long building filled with commercial tenants, including some still connected to maritime affairs. Long Wharf did not have ships tied up for Sail Boston. It is a water transportation hub and was left partially open for the people expected to visit the tall ships.

A short distance from Long Wharf is Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowe’s Wharf with its arched harborside entrance. Two ships were berthed there. One, the full-rigged Kalmar Nyckel, was different from most of the other ships.

The Kalmar Nyckel is a replica of a 1600s Dutch ship. Now berthed in Delaware, its hull was mostly robin’s egg blue painted up to the rail. It also has a very long bowsprit. Her namesake ship was built in Amsterdam around 1625. It was purchased by the Swedish military to form a navy. In 1638, she served as the flagship for a colonial expedition led by Peter Minuit that landed in modern-day Delaware to establish “New Sweden.” It was the first permanent European settlement in the Delaware Valley. The ship successfully completed four transatlantic round trips, more than any other colonial vessel of her era.

On a separate dock was the top sail schooner Oosterschelde. She is designated as a Dutch National Historic Monument. She is celebrated as the last remaining representative of the large fleet of three-masted schooners that carried maritime commerce under the Dutch flag in the early 1900s.

We crossed the harbor toward the Seaport area, and the Zakim Bridge, completed in 2003, came into view. Two white towers connected by white cables resulting in two massive triangles, symbolize a revolution in bridge construction and modern engineering. It is a far different span from the giant erector set that is the Tobin Bridge. Together the two bridges and almost all of the giant buildings visible on this entire cruise have been built in the last 75 years, most of them in the last 50. Economic prosperity was fueled less from maritime trade and more from other means and the shifting emphasis was stark.

I also caught a surprising glimpse of the Old North Church’s white steeple. In colonial times, it was the highest building. The church sat on a hill and the steeple was seen from almost any vantage point, a fact not lost on the Americans, who used the steeple’s height for lanterns to warn citizens if the British were coming: “One if by land, Two if by sea.” How many times have I heard that phrase without realizing how its full import was clearly etched for people at that time? Charlestown, Chelsea, North End. The steeple was visible to all of those areas. It was a remarkable revelation.

We headed from the hotel to the shore of what is now the Seaport District and almost the exact spot where the Boston Tea Party took place. And just a short distance toward the mouth of the harbor was the Mayflower II. Two vessels, replicas of 1600s seafaring ingenuity, berthed on opposite sides of the harbor, so close to one another in time and space.

Towering above the waterfront and Mayflower was the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, a dark, multi-story, semi-circular glass building on Fan Pier. The building looks like it is leaning into the building behind it. It was built on filled land and looked to me as if the footings had shifted beneath the building and the background building was holding it up at an angle. But perhaps it was an optical illusion. It was hard to believe it was a courthouse, but it certainly emphasized the juxtaposition of old and new, history and the present. In this case, it was a rather jarring mix.

John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse

Our journey was coming to an end. But we were heading to the Seaport again on our way out of the harbor, closer to the huge and fascinating ships lining the wharves in this section.

July is also the height of nesting activity for a small shorebird, the piping plover which inhabits the same beaches, but our beach habits disturb the birds’ natural habits. In 1986, the plover was listed as threatened on the federal endangered species list which meant protective measures were required.

Nesting takes place in the spring and summer. The birds’ life-cycle, from creating nests on the beach and egg laying in March-May, to fledging in July or August, means that the birds’ habits and human desires are in direct conflict. Incubation of the nests takes 26-28 days and the pre-fledge stage takes 30-35 days. The clock starts when they start to lay eggs and stops about 56-63 days later when all the chicks have fledged. If they are disturbed and/or they abandon a nest, they start over by renesting and the clock gets reset. The greater protection they have, the faster they will complete the cycle. All of this means that the bulk of summer access could be restricted.

Wikimedia Commons -Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge

Wikimedia Commons - Kaiti Titherington/USFWS

Suddenly, carefree summer days at the beach were upended. In Massachusetts, state regulations were handed down to the towns to manage the new requirements. It meant adding personnel, monitoring avian activity, finding nests, counting breeding pairs, erecting exclusion and/or symbolic fencing around nests, excluding people from nesting areas, excluding dogs running freely, excluding flying kites, and limiting or excluding vehicle and pedestrian access near nesting areas.

Conflicts were many, pointed directly at beach staff, and were highly charged. The young newly hatched sand-colored puff balls were so well camouflaged that seeing them was challenging. Their habit of traveling across sand from the base of dunes toward the water often meant crossing tracks from off-road vehicles. Travel ruts in the sand must have seemed like mountains to climb to the tiny baby birds.

Back in the Day

Folks have been driving on the beach for a long time. Beach buggies, now known as ORVs (off-road vehicles) or OSVs (over-sand vehicles), have had a long history on the beach on the “back side” of Cape Cod. Mooncussers – opportunistic residents who either took advantage of the misfortune of others who had been swept to shore, or, as scurrilous legend would have it, actually lured boats to shore with lanterns - went to the beach with their horse-drawn wagons to strip stranded ships that foundered along the shore. People arrived in their Model A Fords when they came into vogue. People have been driving on the beach ever since to beachcomb and fish or just to have a good time. Kids sat on tailgates of trucks or station wagons, feet dangling over the side, joyfully bouncing and squealing with laughter with every bump in the sand roads. The common belief was that the beach was a family playground where nobody bothered you and all you needed was a beat-up, salt-worn 4-wheel-drive vehicle and a town permit. Fishing rods, boogie boards, inflatable toys, and grills enhanced the pleasures of the day. Surfboards were added to the mix when riding the waves entered the scene in the 60’s and gained momentum over the years.

Regulations to protect a little bird and the requirement to look out for them were not part of summer fun activities. Anger built steadily as the regulations intensified, especially with increased prohibited beach access at the height of the summer. Bumper stickers appeared: Piping Plovers Taste Like Chicken. Tempers flared. Beach privileges were taken away for non-compliance. Something that had been taken for granted as a public right, was curtailed and it did not go over very well.

But the towns were required to manage the beach with deference to the plovers or risk being forced to close the beach until all the chicks fledged. Town personnel bore the brunt of the emotional turmoil, but Selectmen received their share too, hearing not only from beachgoers, but also from businesses dependent on beach travel in a tourist-based economy. Towns pleaded with the state for assistance.

Plover Habitat

Piping plovers have specific preferred habitat. They nest on wide, gently sloping sandy beaches, especially the zone between the toe of dunes and the high‑tide line, sand flats at the end of sand spits, and on overwash fans and flats. An overwash is an area where waves, usually in heavy storms, have eaten away at a dune, reducing the former dune height enough to create a passage through the dune. The waves roll through, depositing all the sand from the flattened dune on the shore side.

Broad sandy beach plover habitat. Photo: S. Macfarlane

Barrier beaches are long stretches of sand separating ocean from back‑barrier bays and marshes. They are shaped by longshore currents, overwash, inlet migration, and landward roll‑over. Undeveloped barrier beaches provide the perfect combination of habitat.

Barrier Beach and overwash sand deposits. Photo: S. Macfarlane

Hardened shorelines (seawalls, revetments, bulkheads) erase this nesting zone. Waves crash against structures and leave no dry sand above high tide. Plovers simply don’t nest there. Nor do they nest on rocky or very steep beaches.

How did we get to this point?

In the late nineteenth century, plovers were hunted for their feathers that were used in the millinery industry for fancy hats. There was so much demand that the population crashed, almost to the point of extirpation along the Atlantic coast. Then in 1918, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted, hunting them was banned and the population began to recover. That recovery lasted until the 1940s. But beginning after WWII, development, beach stabilization, recreation and elevated predation all took their toll with a second decline. In 1986, the listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act led to recovery plans. With that law enacted, protecting the plovers over-rode recreation legally. Twice in about 150 years, the bird faced eradication along our shores. Twice, we needed regulations to save a tiny bird.

Use and Protection: One Town’s Story

The town of Orleans has two separate vehicle-accessible barrier beaches on the outer shores of Cape Cod, both of which have plovers nesting. The staff is very busy with their duties to keep track of all the avian activity and the behavior of the public accessing the beach. In 1986 when the birds were federally listed as threatened, towns in Massachusetts were required to follow protocols established by the state in signage, symbolic fencing, closing areas where nests are active and roping them off, hiring monitors, dog and predator control management, vehicle restrictions and other measures to protect the nesting birds. Orleans Complied.

Over the years, research into the habits of the birds revealed nuances in their behavior that could lead to compromise. One area became an experimental test site. It was an overwash that was a favored nesting area for at least a decade. Unfortunately, the OSV trail that headed miles farther down the barrier beach, bisected the overwash and OSV use conflicted with the nesting birds. When nesting was active, the entire trail was closed to vehicles.

The Massachusetts Endangered Species Act was passed in 1990 and four years later, Massachusetts published Comprehensive Barrier Beach Guidelines and separately, its first listing of endangered species. But it wasn’t until 2016, that the state established a comprehensive Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). That plan allowed some flexibility for protecting the birds instead of earlier prohibitions.

Orleans devised an innovative self-escorting procedure, approved by the state, that allowed the beach to be opened under certain conditions. It was a compromise to strict closure for the entire time the birds were active. It starts when there are up to eight (8) unfledged piping plover chicks and four (4) adult parents present in a specific corridor. Then, the HCP allows up to 180 OSVs per day to pass through what is known as the Pochet Wash corridor.

In essence, the plan requires each vehicle to have a passenger aged 16 or older to walk 15 feet in front of the vehicle. If they see a chick, they signal to stop immediately, the driver honks to notify a bird monitor who escorts the bird out of the way and tells the driver when it is safe to continue. There are three 2-hour windows to allow access, morning, noon, and late afternoon. All vehicles must be off the beach corridor by 6:00 P.M.

The town established a strictly enforced zero-tolerance policy and any violation results in an immediate revocation of the permit for a full year from the date of the offense and a $200 fine. Revocation of a permit for a full year is a definite incentive to follow the procedures.

A year after the plan was implemented, they reduced the closure time by 20 days, an important milestone in the height of summer.

The town’s diligence has proved successful as their nesting pairs have risen from 20 to 40, a doubling in less than a decade.

Finally, after 30 years of trouble on the beach, there was some balance. Beach access is heavily regulated, still closed for part of the nesting cycle when protecting the chicks through their most vulnerable stage. But as the season wanes and fewer birds are in that critical stage, there is a method of opening the beach under carefully controlled conditions. It takes a lot of personnel, patience on the part of permit holders, and full compliance from everyone − but it is working. The bumper stickers are rare these days and for the younger permit holders, this is their norm: living with and protecting a little bird if they want to use the beach as their parents did.

Other towns have their own Habitat Conservation Plan and their specific challenges under the State Habitat Plan Guidelines, details of which can be found through the individual towns.

Statewide, the program is also a success.

In 1985, the Atlantic Coast population of piping plovers was listed as threatened by the federal Endangered Species Act. A year later, there were about 135 nesting pairs in Massachusetts. Today there are nearly 1,200 nesting pairs. Massachusetts supports approximately half of all Atlantic Coast piping plover breeding pairs – a remarkable recovery story.

Why the difference between Massachusetts and other states?

Part of the reason is habitat.

First, Massachusetts has a lot of the “right” habitat.

• Long barrier systems with dunes, overwash zones, and back‑barrier wetlands that provide the kind of open, dynamic beach plovers prefer.

• Many stretches are relatively undeveloped (no continuous seawalls, limited infrastructure on the beach face).

No other Atlantic Coast state comes close to Massachusetts in breeding abundance; most other states support dozens of pairs rather than hundreds. Developed/hardened shorelines (bulkheads, revetments, seawalls, groins) now dominate much of the U.S. Atlantic coast. There are exceptions, mostly with undeveloped barrier/beach segments concentrated in a few regions such as the Outer Banks, parts of the Delmarva peninsula, and national seashores and refuges.

Second, Massachusetts has a relatively high level of nesting activity plus a strong sustained management response to the presence of the nesting birds. It’s that combination of habitat and protective protocols that make a difference.

Storms Take a Toll

There’s another component to the story. It’s not enough to have an increased number of pairs nesting. There also needs to be an increase in the rate of fledging that will stabilize the population. And that brings up another issue – the vulnerability of the birds to loss of nests from storms −─ and what happens next.

While the plovers nest above the high tide line, a storm can wash away the nest. The parents may renest, possibly several times, but the data are not good for renesting fledging success. At other times, they abandon the nest for that year.

One storm can wipe out first clutches across a large area, especially on the Outer Beach of Cape Cod. In 2021, Orleans reported original nests were destroyed by a Nor’easter around Memorial Day, leading plovers to renest. In June of 2025, at least 55 nests were lost from one storm on the Outer Beach and Chatham shores. At least 12 of those were incubating nests for birds already renesting. Reopening dates for OSVs were reset in each case, effectively closing the beach to OSVs for almost the entire summer.

Storm waves and overwash through dune on barrier beach. S. Macfarlane

But a storm may also benefit the birds by creating new nesting territory with overwashes. A decline in fledge rate for one year may not indicate a decline in overall population over time. Tracking nesting success must consider a lot of factors – storms, natural predation, human impacts.

Those carefree days before 1973 when the U.S. Endangered Species Act went into effect are gone. At that time, there were no seals, no sharks and probably few plovers, but the public was generally unaware that was a problem. Cape Cod beaches were a playground in the summertime.

And it took thirty years of protection and research to figure out how to protect the wildlife and at the same time provide some way to coexist with them.

But a storm may also benefit the birds by creating new nesting territory with overwashes. A decline in fledge rate for one year may not indicate a decline in overall population over time. Tracking nesting success must consider a lot of factors – storms, natural predation, human impacts.

Sharing the beach. Nordhouse Dunes Piping Plover Project

Today’s kids will have different experiences. They may be happy to see seals, and hope to see a shark but know not to get too close. They may watch a small shorebird skitter across the wave line, as it pecks at the sand to get a meal where the wave has just retreated. That will be their norm. The wildlife they see will be their norm. They will have the benefit of a more balanced picture than the one presented to past generations. And they will learn that the beach is not just for human pleasure, that they must adjust their actions to respect and accommodate the lives of other creatures. Hopefully they will embrace the concept.

Maybe they will be told of days gone by when there were fewer creatures near or on the beach. Maybe they will hear that when the people left the beach at the end of the day back then, what remained was a long empty swath of sand and maybe some hungry gulls looking for something left behind. Maybe they will begin to understand that lack of other life on the beach was not balanced or normal, and maybe they will learn what it takes to keep the animals that have begun to recover to continue their recovery. Maybe they will be told that we caused the imbalance in the first place. Maybe they will understand that it is up to us to be good stewards for a more balanced future.

Most of the group stayed pretty close together, watching the variety of life before their eyes. I spotted a giant clam and was astounded: I couldn’t believe I was seeing an animal I had heard about for decades but never dreamed of seeing in its native habitat. Yet there it was, siphoning away, taking water in and expelling water out. A massive clam, it size was hard to judge with a mask on, but it looked to be about five feet across and certainly larger than any shellfish I had ever seen. It was attached to the reef surface at its hinge, oriented vertically in the water. I hovered over it for about five minutes before finally leaving, blissfully discovering many more clams in the area.

It was relatively calm that day, which helped. Water did not enter the snorkel breathing tube when swimming at the surface. Back on the boat, we all excitedly shared our observations. Folks exclaimed about the colors they had seen and the sheer variety of fish and coral types. Nobody else had spent their time just happily watching a clam breathe.

It struck me how different the experience would have been if we had been diving instead of snorkeling. We could have gone deeper, breathing air from a tank strapped to our backs, swimming among the life on the reef, without having to come up for air for each breath.

The Miracle of Breathing Underwater

The miracle of humans breathing normally underwater, enjoying life below the surface is thanks to Jaques Cousteau, who, along with engineer Émile Gagnan, developed the first aqualung. That invention opened a new world to millions of people who were suddenly able to see the undersea world for themselves.

Jaques Cousteau was born on June 10, 1910, and died on June 25, 1997, at age 87. He wrote books, including The Silent World (published in 1953), which was made into a movie released in 1956. From that early time and throughout my childhood and early adulthood, Cousteau’s films were prominently available to the public. Beginning with the Silent World, he showed people the wonder of a foreign world, filled with creatures unimaginable to most. The films showed the beauty and life and death struggles of daily survival, and Cousteau began to demonstrate the interconnections taking place beneath the waves, of which people were almost universally unaware.

From that earliest film, his filming technique and improving technologies enhanced what he was getting across in such a way that his series, The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, ran as a television series in 1966-1968. New portals opened to the public with The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, a very popular documentary series from 1968-1976. Later he continued to educate with his Odyssey series of 1977-1981 and his Rediscovery Series of 1985-1994.

While his early work was full of exploration and discovery, his later work described degraded environments in places he had filmed earlier, and he articulated through words and pictures the changes that humans had wrought on fragile marine environments. He explained the natural world at its best and saw its grandeur slip away, warning against what it might become. He used his filmmaking skill to show how events and practices in different parts of the world were hastening dramatic alterations to the natural order. It was a stark warning.

Rachel Carson Makes an Indelible Impression

Rachel Carson lived in the same era. She wrote three books about the sea before her fourth, Silent Spring. Her first book, Under the Sea Wind, was published in 1941; her second, The Sea Around Us, was published in 1951; and her third, The Edge of the Sea, was published in 1955. But her most famous book was Silent Spring, published in 1962.

Rachel Carson was an unlikely person to gain notoriety with the public. She began her career at the Bureau of Fisheries in Washington, rising to become the chief editor of the agency’s publications. She had spent summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, for six years beginning in 1929, gaining valuable scientific research experience. Twenty years later, she participated in a ten-day cruise to Georges Bank aboard the bureau’s research vessel Albatross III, accompanied by her literary agent Marie Rodell, to conduct research for her book, The Sea Around Us.

Serialization helped to propel The Sea Around Us to public attention and awards. One chapter won the George Westinghouse Science Writing Award in the Yale Review, nine chapters were serialized in The New Yorker, and a condensed version appeared in Reader’s Digest, bringing the book to a wider audience. Its status in the New York Times Book Review led to the sale of over 200,000 copies in 1951 and eventually over a million copies; it was translated into 28 languages. A film adaptation followed, winning an Oscar for best documentary.

The success of The Sea Around Us allowed her to leave the Bureau (whose name had changed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) to write full time. She bought property in Southport, Maine, and spent time exploring the tide pools and transition zones between land and sea, culminating in her third book, The Edge of the Sea.

Her three books were a different window into the world both beneath the waves and left behind by the waves in tide pools, marshes, and other environments at the sea’s edge. Her words painted a picture for readers who could then envision the sea and the lives of its inhabitants, even if they never saw them. The books engendered a reverence for that world, just as Cousteau’s films had done.

Both Cousteau and Carson saw changes over time in the marine world as a result of human activity, and both sounded the alarm.

Silent Spring was different from Carson’s other books. A friend, Olga Huckins, sent her a letter detailing the deaths of songbirds in the woods around her two-acre property after aerial spraying of DDT for mosquito control. Carson spent the next four years researching scientific literature on the insecticide and writing the manuscript for Silent Spring, with 55 pages of notes and a list of experts who had read and approved the science of the book. The book built a case about the dangers of pesticides, specifically DDT.

Once again, The New Yorker serialized a condensed version in a three-part series several months before the book was published. It was a commercial success, with 100,000 copies sold in the first three months and 1 million in two years.

Backlash from the chemical industry was swift and personal. But in May 1963, President Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee report mostly corroborated Carson’s claims.

Then, Carson held her own, testifying before Congress, detailing her findings.

Her calm, steady, science-based facts changed the conversation, and many credit her with helping to usher in environmental awareness.

I wasn’t the only one captivated by the work of these two giants. At a meeting of colleagues in the marine science field, the question was raised about what brought us to the field, and every one of my peers in our age group responded by naming either Jaques Cousteau or Rachel Carson or both. They both remain revered figures. To illustrate Carson’s high esteem, a new environmental center in Kennebunk, Maine, called the Rachel Carson Center for People and Nature, officially celebrated its grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 27, 2026.

What lasting legacies!

Startling News Surfaces

These thoughts came to me when I read news that a company in Iceland has a five-year license to harvest whales. Iceland is one of three countries that still hunt whales commercially. After what was termed a “pause” of two years, the company decided to exercise its right to use its license. For the first time since 2023, whales will be hunted in Icelandic waters. What took place recently, as well as the history behind it, is complicated and saved for another day.

But on Monday, June 22, 2026, Iceland public broadcaster RUV reported that two fin whales had been killed on June 21, 2026, marking the first whales taken since the resumption of whaling. Comments from conservation organizations were not unexpected.

Fin whales, are the second largest animal on the planet, surpassed only by the mighty blue whale. They are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Vulnerable on their Red List.

A Small Research Center With A Big Global Impact

This news came just as the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, celebrates its 50th anniversary. Its reputation for studying whales (especially the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales and humpback whales) is well known and highly respected. They keep meticulous records, photographing every whale they see and track their family history. They have developed disentanglement techniques and conduct disentanglements, train others around the world in those methods, partner with whale watch companies, and help to train naturalists for on-board commentary.

The numbers for the right whale program are impressive. In the 2024-2025 season, the center documented sighting of 191 whales, over half of the entire population, and 8 of 11 calves observed in Cape Cod Bay. They conducted 38 aerial surveys and 27 habitat cruises. They saw a peak of 88 right whales in Cape Cod Bay in a single day.

In addition to programs in right whale ecology, marine animal entanglement response, and humpback whale studies, the Center also has programs in marine education, seal research, shark ecology, shoreline and seafloor mapping, coastal geographic research, water quality monitoring, benthic ecology, marine fisheries research, and marine debris and plastics. I can imagine the reaction of the scientists at the Center to the news from Iceland.

Two giants. Different approaches. Different results. Both reaching and educating millions of people about the world under the waves and the interconnectedness of it all. Together, they inspired awe of the sea, but they also showed what human activity can do to the sea’s balance.

One company continuing an outdated practice that few people agree with or want.

One example of an independent marine research center with global recognition, conducting science that matters to protect the marine world and its inhabitants.

Past and present coming together in an extraordinary couple of weeks.

What follows are my recollections of those early days, recounted in my book, Rowing Forward, Looking Back. It is a bit longer than my usual posts but I hope it is of interst.

I had this great job. Now what was I going to do with it?

Aside from the shellfish that were my primary responsibility, I also had to know about other aspects of the estuaries - who used them and for what purpose? Which activities would ultimately affect shellfish and how?

Orleans has three separate estuaries within its jurisdiction. Each estuary was completely different from the others. Cape Cod Bay, is the large expanse of water encompassing the shoreline of the flexed arm that is the shoreline from Marshfield to Provincetown. Orleans’ portion is a sliver of shoreline that is about a mile wide but sand flats extend for a mile offshore.

Nauset/Town Cove, is an exquisite mixture of coastal environments that remain incredibly productive despite being adjacent to a major highway and a busy-downtown commercial area.

Pleasant Bay, is the largest estuary of its kind on the Cape and a true gem any way you look at it. It is within the jurisdiction of Orleans, Chatham, Harwich and a tiny bit of Brewster.

These three diverse systems were my laboratory. What made them distinct from one another? Why were some plants or animals found in one and not another? How could they be so different and yet be so close as the gull flies? Why did certain species of shellfish do well in one place and not another? Would I ever be able to answer those questions?

Orleans estuaries looking South: Pleasant Bay (top); Cape Cod Bay far right; Nauset/Town Cove (bottom). Photo by Kelsey/Kennard

Numerous researchers have described Cape Cod as a geographic and biologic dividing line. It is the northern limit of southern species most commonly found near the Gulf Stream, one of the world’s longest and most influential currents, and the southern limit of northern species found inhabiting the colder boreal waters along the Labrador Current. Orleans epitomizes that dividing-line with its three separate estuaries exhibiting different natural regimes. Northern species could be found in Cape Cod Bay and sometimes Nauset, for example, while some southern species were found in Pleasant Bay but rarely Nauset and never Cape Cod Bay.

The first thing I needed to do was to get acquainted in a more up front and personal manner with the shoreline and estuaries. I devised a check list of plants and animals common to the region, added sediment types to the list, got a pair of hip boots, bought a basket scratcher and lined it with quarter-inch galvanized hardware cloth, and set out walking, looking, and recording my observations. I parked at a town landing and walked all around and then back again. Or I asked waterfront property owners if I could park in their yard. Not only was I never refused, most of the time I was the recipient of some neighborly gesture. The people were terrific.

As I walked along, I was struck by the diversity of the shoreline. Sand, gravel, cobble, silt, shell, mud and all combinations. Coarse and fine sand, gravel with rocks - every conceivable combination of sediment types, often changing abruptly from one to another in a matter of a few feet. Animals were present in some areas and absent in others, those patterns also changing abruptly.

Then there were the creeks that led to salt marshes. These were shoreline indentations, once coves, that had gradually filled in with sediment. They had developed over thousands of years into some of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Some of the marshes were no bigger than an acre or two and others were vast systems covering tens of acres. The bigger the marsh, the bigger the creeks feeding it. The sediment at the bottom of a creek was usually soft, a function of the slow water velocity constantly depositing fine materials, except at the mouth where the fine materials were washed out of the creek. Often there was a sand delta at the mouth, beyond which was often a bottom of softer sediments. Salt marshes are where red-wing blackbirds flit and marsh hawks hover overhead and a fox searches for small animals for her pups. The marsh creeks may be filled with mummichogs and stickle-backs, small fish darting through the water as the tide comes and goes. And yes, the marsh is also home to the interminably pesky greenhead fly whose worldly “value” we may not know but whose bite we surely do know.

Birds foraged as the tide went out, searching for those morsels that would tide them over. There were large boulders, dropped in place by the glaciers, with barnacles or mussels or various types of seaweed attached, depending on what body of water I was at.

As I walked along the shores of both Nauset and Pleasant Bay, rivulets of fresh water flowed from the land. In the summer, old sneakers replaced the clunky hip boots and I could feel the marked difference between cold fresh water and the warmer salt water. Some of those streams were also marked by red sand and in that red sand, there were rarely clams and almost never quahaugs. But slightly offshore, where fresh and salt water intermingled, was a different story. Quahaugs were often found there. Wherever there were fresh water rivulets, there were usually large colonies of mud snails, seemingly gliding along the bottom.

Scratching around large boulders usually revealed a little group of quahaugs. Clams lined the shores in places and in other places there were hardly any. Sometimes there were no shellfish for a long distance alongshore and I’d try to figure out what was so different. Sometimes I saw shell fragments but no live specimens and other times I’d find species of shellfish that were not commercially important. Once in a while I’d find a real oddity, something that the guide books said was rare for the region.

There were clams on sand bars close to the ocean and as far from the ocean as the upper reaches of the estuaries. There were mussels in Nauset but none in the Orleans portion of Pleasant Bay. Quahaugs were almost everywhere in Nauset. But they were few and far between in Pleasant Bay. There were worms that looked like beige ribbons and worms that looked like red thread.

Even better than walking the shores, however, was use of the town workboat whenever I wanted. I used a “look box” with a clear Plexiglas bottom that I could use to peer into the water from the boat.

I observed the watery world by travelling slowly in shallow water, either with the engine idling or by letting the boat drift in the tide. Using the boat that way didn’t do much for the engine but it was incredibly revealing to me. I compared areas when the tide was low and the critters were hiding and when it was high and they were all moving about. In the summer, I also snorkeled in Pleasant Bay. I was fascinated to see tiny seed scallops attached to eelgrass before they were large enough to fend for themselves on the bottom.

As the boat drifted over the immense eelgrass meadows that existed in the bay then, I often saw pipefish, which resemble sea-horses, or various species of other small fish darting through what must have been a forest to them. I saw tiny snails attached to the blades of grass and tinier, circular, white hard-shelled worms seemingly glued on to the grass for decoration. There’d be patches of sand with no grass and then thick grass again. Why?

I drifted over the shores that I had walked at low tide, watching the multitude of animals move around in their element. I watched the struggle for survival among species. I’d dig something up and watch and time how long it took the animal to dig back into the sediment. I dug up small conchs, predatory animals that can drill a perfectly round hole in the shell of a clam or quahaug, and wonder how it found its prey. I watched a moon snail wrap its “foot” around a clam and then cover it with a gelatinous substance so that the clam couldn’t siphon water. Seeing all this wasn’t much like work to me.

There were starfish in Nauset, none in Pleasant Bay, and blue crabs in Pleasant Bay and none in Nauset. Tiny gem clams that looked like baby quahaugs were extremely common in Pleasant Bay and almost non-existent in Nauset. The amount of life I saw was endless - I always saw something new. I bought an array of guide books to help me identify what I was seeing.

In lousy weather, I often traveled to Woods Hole to the Marine Biological Laboratory library, one of the foremost libraries of its type in the country. There, because I worked for the town, I was able to obtain journal articles on all aspects of marine science. I was beginning to plug in those variables that make marine ecology special.

I learned to identify the marine life, but to me, that was only a small part of the picture. I needed to know the whole picture. What interacted with what? Where did we fit into the scheme? What areas were heavily used and what ones were less popular and why? Actually, “why” became my favorite word. I needed to look critically at each separate body of water throughout the year to get a sense about how each fit into the bigger picture.

Later in this learning process, when I was in my 14’ Cape Dory in Pleasant Bay, I sometimes stopped rowing in the middle of Little Bay and just turned my boat in a circle and looked around. Out there, thinking about the tremendous number of plants and animals that gain sustenance from this bay, I felt small in comparison to the grandeur around me. I recognized that although humans are the largest user, in all senses of the word, we are only one of many, not the only one involved in the “budget” of the Bay.

The biodiversity of Pleasant Bay is immense. The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries found over 60 species of fish and shellfish alone in one survey conducted in1967 and they did not sample for crustaceans or other invertebrates besides shellfish. In 2002, the state’s Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program listed 7 species that were Endangered, Threatened or of Special Concern. Not only does the Bay have much of the same species diversity found in the Nauset system, but because it also has undeveloped islands, the bay has the added biomes of upland and transitional areas between land and sea.

In 2017, the Center for Coastal Studies conducted a study for the Friends of Pleasant Bay to compare the Bay to the 1967 DMF report. But they were also tasked to provide a full ecological analysis that would be a second baseline. This comprehensive study points out the importance of generally unseen species that contribute greatly to the overall diversity of the bay.

Pleasant Bay helped me gain a true understanding of the complexity of estuaries and the surrounding upland. I don’t mean I understand everything about them. Quite the contrary. I mean that I view them as interrelated systems and I hope I will always be learning more about them. I see the whole but I also see the parts, each part a discrete habitat with transitions from one part to another.

Traveling from the inland areas surrounding Pleasant Bay to the ocean, the habitats include upland, coastal banks, marshes, beaches, tidal flats, cobble, submerged lands and overlying waters, and islands with beaches, marshes, thickets and some upland. Lastly one finds more tidal flats and then the dunes of the outer beach with the Atlantic Ocean beyond. In the upper parts of the bay there are the semi-enclosed quiescent ponds, some of which lead even further inland to fresh water ponds. The flowing water between the fresh water lakes and ponds and the salt ponds is the pathway for the herring (an extremely important food source for larger fish) to swim annually from the sea to the lakes in the ancient ritual of procreation.

These separate habitats and the transition zones between them contain a complexity of interdependent life that is truly amazing, from large mammals to tiny beach fleas and all manner of life in between.

The intertidal and nearshore area is home not just to clams and quahaugs, but also home to crabs and worms and other forms of life that provide food for the thousands of shorebirds that stop to rest and feed on their yearly migrations north and south. The water is teeming with plankton, the young-of-the-year that will become the fish and shellfish and predators of the following year. The islands provide refuge to some animals where predators may not be as numerous as on the mainland. Ospreys have made a comeback, thanks in part to the platforms erected by humans for their nests. The fish that find themselves gripped in the osprey’s talons may not be grateful to us, but ospreys were part of the landscape before humans nearly killed them off with DDT. Now they are back.

The horseshoe crab, related to spiders and a member of earth’s community for hundreds of millions of years, plows its way across Pleasant Bay’s shallow waters in search of its favorite food, the gem clam. The one-eighth-inch gem clam is a mollusk that looks like a miniature quahaug, except that the purple is on the outside of the shell. There are probably billions of them in the bay.

This is merely a sampling of the number of terrestrial, intertidal, aquatic, and avian species that utilize the bay’s complexity during a normal year.

When you look at Orleans as a whole, the three separate and highly productive estuaries make the town’s coastal resources extraordinary. They provide habitat for four of the major species of commercially important shellfish: soft-shell clams, quahaugs, bay scallops and blue mussels. They provide habitat for spawning, nursery or feeding of dozens of fish and other invertebrate species and habitat for the huge populations of migratory and non-migratory birds. Species diversity and complexity of habitats is what makes the area so special, but I also learned that its exquisite complexity is what makes it so fragile.

I got to know the waters quite well. I knew them intimately, foot by foot. Some stretches of shoreline I felt compelled to walk again and again, often not really knowing why they struck me so. Others I walked once and lost interest and didn't go back to for a long time. I realized quickly that investigating the shoreline just once in a while was not enough. The shoreline may look the same but it is constantly changing and the animals that make their home there might be there one year but not the next, possibly pushed out by something else that was more efficient for living in just that space at that particular time. The shore subtly evolved as much as I did.

It didn't take me long to realize that plugging in the variables for this ecology exercise was not going to be a piece of cake. I was at the bottom of a steep learning curve.

Spring is the season when life speeds up. Change is everywhere. Whether it crawls, flies or swims, critters are on the move. If it doesn’t move, maybe it simply adjusts. Like trees that transform from bare branches to buds to flowers to leaves. Blink and one phase advances to the next.

It’s the time of renewal, new generations making their appearance. I recently saw three pairs of Canada geese and their offspring munching on grass. Altogether, there were about 15 fuzzy brown goslings, their bodies about the size of my outstretched hand. The roads in the park setting were not highly traveled and those cars that were there drove very slowly. One goose, I suspect it was a male, was about a foot off the pavement, keeping careful watch on any car that did go by, guarding the three adults and 11 goslings at that location while the remainder were a short distance away.

A lot of the activity takes place because of warming temperatures. Air temperature, soil temperature, water temperature. They all play a part in seasonal progressions. Most folks see the alterations on the land. Gardeners watch vegetation cycles when carefully planted seeds sprout, promising future glory until the north wind announces the end of the growing season. But it is just as dramatic in and around the water.

Fishermen watch the birds and weather patterns to piece together subtleties on the water, anxiously awaiting the arrival of their favorite fish. As the gulls congregate at herring runs, fishermen know the water temperature is around 50 degrees because the herring begin to show up. Herring’s instinct to travel hundreds of miles in their annual migration to spawn, is tied to temperature and heralds the arrival of spring.

In a seaside tourist area like Cape Cod, Easter weekend is often the onset of traffic into stores like marine and tackle shops. People start thinking about boats and fishing, getting gear and equipment in order. But Memorial Day is chaotic hustle. Property owners arrive to check on their houses, open them up, and enjoy their first weekend there. Boat owners line up at the launching ramps. If they called ahead to have their boat in the water, the local boatyards scrambled to make it all happen. Other people come and may take their first walk on the beach. The place is buzzing and then on Monday, the traffic heading home is horrendous. And things slow down again for a few weeks.

Those people are not the only ones to arrive though. The striped bass arrive too.

Striped bass are also anadromous fish that spawn in the rivers emptying into Chesapeake Bay, and the Delaware and Hudson areas. As juveniles, schoolies, as they are called, swim in the coastal areas and estuaries all along the Northeast coast where the salinity is slightly lower than the open ocean. They stay in the coastal areas for up to four years and attain a size of about 12-24 inches. As they migrate north, they are considered one population. They come into these embayments because they’re semi-enclosed, protected and warmer. And the herring are there too – adults that have spawned and those late ones that are still in the runs getting to their spawning grounds. They provide plenty to eat for the bass. These estuaries provide other food too since they are nursery grounds for many species of fish and invertebrates.

The striped bass story is, like most harvested fish species, a complicated one. Bass are one of, if not THE most sought after and popular gamefish in the Northeast to catch. Their story also engenders emotional reactions when the subject comes up, especially since the 1970s. Just go into a tackle shop or listen at places like coffee shops and bars, or at the docks, wherever fishermen gather to hear some of the comments.

Prior to the 1970s bass were prized fish, the bigger, the better. Charter boats had their clients lay the fish on the dock after a successful trip to entice others that this was the boat to charter to catch fish. Surf casting on a beach was a time-honored tradition as an alternative to fishing on the water. The “back side” of Cape Cod, beaches of the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, Montauk and Long Island, parts of New Jersey, Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks as well as scattered places in New Hampshire and Maine, became favorites among afficionados.

Photo: National Park Service Assateague Island National Seashore

Then in the early 1970s, the striped bass population experienced an extended series of poor year classes. By the early 1980s, excessive fishing pressure added to the poor recruitment, according to the Maryland DNR. In 1984, states along the East Coast enacted a moratorium on bass fishing or imposed strict size limits. In 1985, most states kept the moratorium in effect, but MA began the rebuilding phase with a tightly controlled fishery including a minimum size limit. They raised the size limit gradually from 28” to 36”. The stock improved with all the restrictions and in 1990, states that had maintained the moratorium lifted it. They restarted fishing with a 28” limit. MA kept the size they already had that year, 36”, a hot topic of conversation. Then MA joined the member states of the Atlantic States Fisheries Management Commission (ASFMC) to have a consistent coast-wise recovery plan. By 1995, striped bass were declared fully recovered. The regulations were 2 fish with a 28” minimum.

The plan worked. Then in 2020, the ASFMC changed the management plan from size/bag limit to what they call slot management. Under this system, fishermen can harvest fish within a size range. The goal of the slot method is to ensure that the fish reach maturity to spawn and also to protect the larger more productive female spawning stock. At the time the rules were 1 fish at 28”to less than 35”. In 2023, signs of a population decline were seen again and the managers wanted to address the decline as soon as it became evident. They restricted it to a slot of 28”to less than 31”.

To add to the debate, commercial fishing operated under different rules so there was tension between recreational and commercial fishing communities.

One of the issues not considered earlier was the massive number of fish caught and released. But when researchers realized that there is a great deal of mortality for fish that are caught and thrown back, catch and release became a serious issue. Two problems rose to the top of the list of the need to address: hooks and handling.

Without going into too much detail, traditional hooks, like “J” hooks, were generally used for bait fishing. The fish were known to swallow the bait and if they did, the hook could get caught in internal organs and are more difficult to remove without greater damage to the fish. And often the mortality does not show up immediately, so the actual mortality is difficult to quantify.

Circle hooks have been around for a very long time but were not popularized in the current context until the late 1990s. They tend to hook the mouth or lip. In 1996, when researchers searched for studies on their effectiveness, there were none, but by 2004, there were 15 studies. A review of the studies by Cooke and Suski (2004) (https://doi.org/10.1002/aqc.614), estimated that the annual number of catch and release bass was 1.3 million and that number exceeded the total taken in the commercial fishery. Circle hooks helped but were not a cure for the problems. They still accounted for 1-6% mortality but the “J” hooks were 9-18%.

Circle Hook “J” Hook

Photo: New Hampshire Fish and Game

Fishing with circle hooks takes adjustment in technique. It means letting the fish take the hook but not “setting” the hook with a swift tug on the line. It means patience but avoiding long fights.

Reducing mortality for catch and release fishing means using tackle strong enough to land the fish quickly, minimizing air exposure and keeping the fish in the water whenever possible. It means avoiding gaffs if the fish it to be released and it means reviving the fish by facing it into the current.

Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources

With these changes in gear that necessitate a change in how one fishes, coupled with the management regulations, the combination engenders lots of conversation.

That is the way on the water.

And so the herring arrive following their instinct to create a new generation. Bass arrive to feed on the herring and other estuarine critters. But they also bite on food presented to them on a hook.

And that leads to us, the top predator in the web of life. Only we have the ability to correct our mistakes. If we pay attention.

In mid-May, many herring runs are alive with fish traveling in both directions, those heading up the river or stream to spawn and those that have made it to the spawning grounds, performed their ritual, and are returning to the sea.

But in some locations, fish are stymied. Their instinct thwarted. Passage to their spawning grounds blocked. They are victims of our continual alteration of the landscape. We let the stream water flow, but it may be slowed by undersized and poorly maintained culverts or gushing over dams, impossible to leap over.

And so, the millions of herring that once made the streams look like “rivers of silver,” have dwindled to a tiny fraction of what they once were.

Herring have always been an important fish. Because they feed on plankton, they are near the bottom of the food chain, close to the ultimate energy source, the sun. They provide food for everything above them, fish, land animals, birds. Their abundance was an ecological gift to balance the connection between land and sea. They have been important to humans including generations of indigenous people who relied on them and taught early colonists about their many uses and how to fish for them.

There are two types of herring: Atlantic (or sea-run) herring are strictly marine and river herring (blueback and alewives) are anadromous (spawn in fresh water and spend years in the ocean). There are multiple obstacles to survival of both types, but river herring are particularly vulnerable and their numbers have plummeted from former abundance. The reasons for the decline and challenges of recovery for them can be broken down into two main categories. Barriers on land and bycatch (unintended harvest) at sea.

NOAA Fisheries

Land – Where it Begins

As the population grew after colonization, the people created land obstructions. We began to disrupt the flow of rivers and eventually upset the delicate balance. Roads crossed streams and wagons drove through them. Crossings were improved by filling in the banks of the rivers and installing a pipe through the filled stream bed. The water flowed but was more restricted. Debris naturally accumulated that reduced the flow even further to the point that the fish could no longer get to their spawning grounds.

Mills were constructed next to rivers using the water to power the machinery of the mill. As the industrial revolution progressed, more rivers were dammed to provide hydropower. New England became an economic center because of its many mills lining the major rivers in town after town. Dams may have been much smaller than the giant dams elsewhere in the U.S., but without fish ladders, they were an impassible barrier for fish migration.

Wikimedia Commons

Few people considered the larger picture in relation to population dynamics. Each blocked stream is a loss of habitat and the potential loss of millions of fish that come to produce a new generation. Harvesting too many fish means fewer fish to create that new generation.

In both cases, the cumulative effect can be devastating.

Now, we are beginning to realize those effects and are taking action to restore both habitat and the populations.

A Daunting Task

Correcting past alterations is a daunting task. The challenge is immense and the fish population, especially in southern New England, remains in a precarious position.

And yet, there is hope for the future. The land side of the equation is undergoing change, in attitude and infrastructure. The restored ladder at Damariscotta Mills, discussed in the previous article on herring, is an example of the passionate affinity for the annual fish migration and the community resolve to support the project, stick to it, and get it done. And the residents take pride in their accomplishment, continuing the financial obligation to maintain it. They are not alone. Restoration projects throughout the region have taken place, are under construction or are in the planning stages.

For perspective, the Connecticut River empties into Long Island Sound. It is the longest river in New England at over 400 miles. The Connecticut River Conservancy is a good example of cooperative efforts throughout a five-state region. The Conservancy notes that there are thousands of dams in the watershed, many of which are obsolete and tens of thousands of stream crossings, (bridges and culverts), many undersized. They and their partners have restored over 427 miles of river habitat through dam removal and upgraded culverts. That is just one river.

On the other end of the spectrum are smaller projects like the Coonamessett River restoration in Falmouth, MA. This was a run that produced millions of herring at the turn of the 20^th century. In 2015, there were fewer than 75,000. The restoration was a phased project to remove dams, replace failed culverts, purchase riparian land, and create wetlands. Native plant seeds, buried under cranberry bogs, and dormant for generations, were viable and repopulated the wetlands with native vegetation when the natural hydrology was reestablished.

After 16 years, (2009-2025) the town achieved full restoration. The landscape changed from cultivated cranberry bogs to free-flowing habitat, unobstructed passage for the herring and eels, nearly 80 acres of wetland with a meandering stream, and access to a 158-acre spawning pond. The wetlands absorb carbon and nitrogen, and the public gained nature trails and increased resilience as climate continues to change.

David Weeden, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal councilman was quoted on CAI, the local NPR station. He was at the celebration held at the completion of the project and said that it represented more than fish passage. “It’s about reconnecting with the lifeways that sustained our people long before colonial boundaries were drawn,” he said. “Reestablishing cold-water habitats is ecologically healing, and it’s also an example of a cultural shift that recognizes the rights of nature.”

NOAA Aerial view of the restored lower Coonamessett River. Credit: Adam Soule.

In Maine, the Penobscot River restoration project is an example of a huge, multi-year, multi- goal project. A primary portion was the removal of two major dams and a bypass of another while many smaller dams were also removed. The project was initiated as an attempt to enhance the last remaining native Atlantic salmon populations and salmon have begun to return. But herring benefited as well. Over 2000 miles of habitat were reopened for fish passage and millions of herring returned to the river above the site of one of the major dams where none were seen before the removal.

Herring Counters

In the late 1960s, foreign factory ships fished the tremendously productive waters of the western North Atlantic. They harvested and processed staggering amounts of fish. All the species of commercially important fish seemed inexhaustible. But they weren’t. River herring were as vulnerable as all the other commercial species being fished. Even when harvesting switched to the domestic fleet, the population continued to decline. Concerned managers looked to protecting the spawning areas.

By 2005, the state placed a moratorium on harvest of herring from any runs in MA. The Division of Marine Fisheries needed baseline data for stock assessments and they needed help. They reached out to the communities for assistance. And the people answered the call.

Today, organizations such as the Association to Preserve Cape Cod and the North and South Rivers Watershed Association coordinate many of those efforts. Massachusetts also has a statewide monitoring network, and annual counting workshops help train volunteers and standardize methods. Massachusetts is not alone. Organizations in other New England states mobilized to help count the fish too. In a good year, the counts can be demanding and highly focused work, because the fish may move quickly and in large numbers.

NSRWA; Photos by Alex Mansfield

Top: Fish counted as they go over the board. Bottom: Students involved in counting

When the harvest moratorium was imposed in 2005, it was anything but a difficult task. There were usually few fish to count at some runs, and many times, none. But the volunteers took their turn at their appointed times.

Observers explain their reasons for volunteering, even with low expectations. For some, it is the tranquility of the run itself. For others, it is a lifetime of observation and the chance to witness a natural event that has shaped coastal communities for generations. For still others, it is the hope of one day going there and finding fish swimming up the run.

In time, their hope was rewarded as the fish slowly came back.

The Ocean – Complications Multiply

The larger picture is more complicated. When river herring leave fresh water, they spend several years in the ocean, where they mix with Atlantic herring and other fish in large schools. That creates a difficult management problem: once fish are caught in a net, it is impractical to separate them species by species with confidence.

Atlantic Herring, NOAA Fisheries

River Herring NOAA Fisheries; Calvin Alexander

That is why the focus has shifted toward avoiding risky schools before the tow. NOAA says river herring management includes efforts to reduce commercial fishing impacts, and that real-time information can help vessels avoid areas where interactions are more likely. In practice, that means fishery managers and captains are trying to make better decisions before fish ever reach the deck.

Acoustic tools can help with that effort. Multi-beam sonar can show the size, shape, and density of a school ahead of the boat, which may help indicate whether a tow is worth the risk. But sonar does not provide a perfect species count, so it is best understood as a risk-reduction tool rather than a precise identification system.

Laboratory analysis can help too. It is where otoliths becomes important. Otoliths, the small ear bones in a fish’s head, can preserve a chemical record that scientists use to infer where a fish originated. That kind of analysis is valuable for proving natal origin after the fact, but it does not solve the immediate problem of bycatch (non-target fish) at sea.

The good news is that both sides of the issue are moving in the right direction. On land, dam removal, culvert replacement, and habitat restoration are reopening spawning habitat. At sea, managers and fishers are working on ways to reduce bycatch before it happens. For river herring, recovery will depend on both.

When big white sharks arrive, so do fear and awe. Great white sharks in Massachusetts waters have been a subject of interest since their appearance became common. They are not alone in visiting these waters. Seals, whales, dolphins and turtles all face multiple challenges on a potentially dangerous journey as they migrate to New England in one of nature’s mystical events. Instinct, food, seasonality and temperature all play a part.

Most of them are searching for food in an environment where the law of survival is eat or be eaten. Perhaps lesser known are the dangers they encounter and the global significance of their story.

Cape Cod, described by Thoreau as the “bared and bended arm of Massachusetts,” intersects with that journey, resulting in astounding consequences. The arm can also be described as a hook and it is that description that poses a special challenge, as well as opportunity, for many marine species. This relatively small peninsula, located about 40 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, has an outsized reputation and importance on a global scale.

Map Design © MapWorks 2016

Sharks and Seals

Prior to around 1990, seals were a surprising sight swimming along the ocean-side beaches. Their populations had plummeted with hunting activity, especially in the 1800s. They gained protection in 1972, two years after the first Earth Day, with passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which specified that no marine mammal could be hunted, killed, or harassed in any way.

Seal populations began to recover. Gray seals, found from Newfoundland to Long Island, increased tremendously and rather quickly. They began breeding in the southern part of their range, first on Madaket off Nantucket and then Monomoy off Chatham. Now there are thousands of them arriving in the spring and leaving in the late fall.

With such a rapid increase, a phenomena such as predation or disease may begin to even the score. In this case, their natural predator, great white sharks, protected by the Endangered Species Act, showed up. To many human visitors, seals were a cute and happy occurrence. To many fishermen, seals were a substantial problem, eating fish off their hooks, in their nets or before they reached the hooks. Commercial and recreational fishermen alike cursed the presence of seals. Humans cursed the sharks because of fear of going into the water. The presence of sharks in the summer was perceived as a disaster. While officials scrambled to protect the public, both seals and sharks continued to increase in number, protected from human interference.

Now, sharks are a constant presence. People are learning to live with them. Over 300 have been tagged with sensors, acoustic buoys are deployed at the most obvious collection of sharks to determine their behavior, lifeguards are alerted to the presence of sharks, shark tours have become popular and beach goers are more likely to at least cool off in the water than they were when the sharks first began to appear. However, the sharks don’t leave at the end of summer. They increase in August, peak in September when lifeguards have departed, begin to leave in October and are gone by late November. The shark population increased and Cape Cod gained international recognition as having the second highest aggregation of white sharks in the world, estimated at over 800. Only South Africa has a higher number.

Sea Turtles

As the water cools, sharks leave, and four species of sea turtles search for a way out of the hook that is Cape Cod Bay. Kemp’s Ridley, Loggerhead, Green and occasionally Leatherback turtles, all of which are listed as either “threatened” or “endangered,” come to the bay in the summer to feed on plentiful crabs, sea jellies (or jellyfish) and algae. While water takes longer to cool than air, the water temperature can drop surprisingly swiftly in the late fall, especially when the wind out of the NW howls, causing a frothy ocean after a storm.

The surface temperature plunges and the cold-blooded turtles that need to breathe at the surface, become cold stunned. In that state, they are lethargic and at the mercy of the punishing frigid surface waves and wind. They are blown to shores along the beaches in the elbow of Cape Cod, the geographic hook claiming its victims. At high tide, they end up in the marshes and flotsam of the wrack lines. With the air even colder than the water, they are in danger of freezing.

An army of volunteers from Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary in Wellfleet comb the shores at high tide day and night under fierce piercingly cold wind, to locate turtles and bring them to Wellfleet. The staff there helps the turtles with towels and blankets and packs them in banana boxes for a 90-mile trip to Quincy where the New England Aquarium has a rehabilitation hospital. Over the last two decades, 500 to 700 turtles stranded on the beaches every year, but over 800 stranded in 2023. The Quincy facility ships some of them to other rehabilitation centers along the East Coast. Those strong enough to survive are eventually released into the ocean.

Dolphins

As fall turns to winter, dolphins and harbor seals show up. Many of them end up on Cape Cod Bay beaches as well. In this case, the cause is probably not just the hook shape but also the depth of water, which changes from relatively deep to extremely shallow. At the elbow, from Brewster to Wellfleet, the flats extend over a mile from the beach. A ten-foot tide goes down to zero twice a day and dolphins get caught, even with their powers of sonar.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) opened a dolphin rehabilitation clinic located in Orleans to treat dolphins close to where they are found. Before the clinic, the only thing IFAW staff could do was rudimentary treatments on the shore and to get the dolphins back to the sea, hoping for the best. They don’t know how many of them survive. The numbers are variable but in 2012, a mass stranding of 178 dolphins were found on Cape beaches. Of those, 107 were dead and 71 were alive, 53 of which were ultimately returned to the water.

These stranding episodes placed Cape Cod as the top place nationally, competing with Australia and New Zealand, in the top three places in the world for marine animal strandings, and that does not include the turtles.

North Atlantic Right Whales

By March, at least half of the global population of North Atlantic right whales are sighted swimming up the coast on their annual migration from the Florida area. They too enter Cape Cod Bay following their favorite food, tiny shrimp-like copepods. They stay in the bay until May, when they head north. While in the bay, there is a ban on lobster fishing because of the danger of entanglements with lobster fishing gear.

Until about 2015, they left Cape Cod Bay and entered the Bay of Fundy. However, they have altered course and now go directly farther north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. All along their route, their migration has been designated critical habitat, where ships need to slow down when a whale is known to be in the area, but when they entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it was an event that had not been witnessed and therefore, no protections were in place. The whales were in uncharted territory with danger all around. The Gulf is one of the most highly trafficked water bodies in the world, with ships servicing both the U.S. and Canada all the way to the Great Lakes. In addition, there is a robust crab fishery in the Gulf with fixed gear on the bottom and lots of buoy lines from the traps to the surface.

Between ship strikes and gear entanglements, a North Atlantic Right Whale Unusual Mortality Event had been declared in the U.S. and Canada beginning in 2017 and continues to be in effect. Since that time, the Unusual Mortality Event affected 170 individual whales, 43 confirmed dead, 40 with serious injuries and 87 with sub-lethal injuries or illnesses, representing nearly half the population of these highly endangered animals. With only about 80 females left in the entire population that breed once in nine years and have a gestation period of a year, every whale counts. Losing 170 individuals through death, injury or disease, does not bode well for the future of these highly endangered animals.

Humpback Whales

As spring arrives, the right whales leave and the humpbacks arrive. Considered a darling of the whale watch industry, the number of humpbacks has been increasing steadily.

Research and Rescues

Since the 1970s, the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown has had an amazing reputation for studies on whales, seals, marine geology, fisheries, shark ecology, marine ecology, marine debris and plastics and water quality that have global implications. The Center has conducted one of the most detailed long-term continuous research programs on humpback whales and is curator of the longest maintained catalog of individual humpbacks. The Center also collaborates with many other organizations to add information to the catalog. For the past 30 years, the Center has been researching and observing North Atlantic right whales, including through aerial and on-the-water surveys, to learn more about their habits and habitat. In addition, since 1984, the Center has disentangled more than 200 large whales and other marine animals through their Marine Entanglement Response Program, and they also provide training for disentanglement teams around the world.

For a small hook-shaped peninsula sticking 40 miles seaward of the coast of Massachusetts, to have such a global effect for marine animals is remarkable. Its annual seasonal visitors include up to 800 white sharks, hundreds of thousands of seals, an unknown number of turtles that visit but 500-800 turtles strand annually, about 260 dolphins that have stranded on Cape beaches, over half of the world population of the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale and 800-900 humpback whales that visit the Gulf of Maine, many of which feed in Cape Cod Bay, Stellwagen Bank and waters around the Cape. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the MA Division of Marine Fisheries and organizations such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, New England Aquarium, Center for Coastal Studies, Mass Audubon Wellfleet Sanctuary, Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and International Fund for Animal Welfare headquartered on Cape Cod, all share some aspects of research and care of these animals. Their work is enhanced by the collaboration among them and the regulations that protect the animals.

We celebrate Earth Day every day when we are lucky enough to see these animals but just knowing they are in our midst is cause for celebration. May that continue to be so.

The February Blizzard that dumped three feet of snow in SE Massachusetts is a memory. By the second week in March, the snow began to disappear. Within a couple of weeks, almost all of it had vanished. It was as if it had never happened.

Seasons have now changed. By the beginning of April, visible signs of spring were everywhere. Daffodils, sprouting, growing skyward and budding quickly, getting ready to bring a smile while forsythia shines in yellow splendor and tree foliage is almost ready to burst forth all fill the landscape.

Less visible, estuaries were changing too and one of the first signs was the arrival of herring. They were coming from the ocean to the freshwater ponds on their annual migration to their spawning grounds. The ritual of this important fish at the base of the food web signaled the cycle of life under water had begun.

Pastoral Stony Brook

The gulls announce the arrival of herring. They circle overhead or rest on exposed rocks along the sides of the stream at Stony Brook Valley in Brewster and squawk a cacophony of protest if another gull enters their territory.

It is not a deep ravine. The hills on either side are only about fifty feet high, but that is high for this part of Cape Cod.

Year after year, decade after decade, century after century for millennia, the river herring—two closely-related species, alewives and bluebacks—have returned to this stream, one of the state’s most productive and scenic herring runs, to swim upstream, spawn, and then head back down to the sea.

They start their journey in Cape Cod Bay sometime around the beginning of April, when the water temperature is around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and enter the mouth of Paine’s Creek. The fish swim through the extensive salt marsh to a culvert under Route 6A. There the creek emerges from the culvert with a different name—Stony Brook—and the salt marsh morphs into a brackish marsh and then to abandoned cranberry bogs. Farther along, the creek meets a gentle rise in elevation. There the fish begin their ascent to the freshwater ponds they are seeking, traveling a mile and a half to their destination, where they will spawn.

Rock outcroppings squeeze the water into a high-velocity gush where the herring bound through. Relatively quiescent pools along the way are respites where the fish rest until ready to resume the journey. The strong or just plain lucky ones survive. Others feed the raucous gulls that pluck the fish as they leap or while they swim more slowly in the resting pools.

In The Run, noted naturalist writer John Hay explores the interrelationships of the fish to a world in which their role is tied to many other creatures, including us. He magnificently captures the essence of herring as they journey up the interconnected sequential environments from the sea to fresh-water ponds:

“The fish kept moving up. I watched them swinging back and forth with the current, great-eyed, probing, weaving, their dorsal fins cutting the surface, their ventral fins fanning, their tails flipping and sculling. In the thick inter-balanced crowd there would suddenly be a scattered dashing, coming as quickly as cat’s paws flicking the summer seas. They may have moved by “reflex” rather than conscious thought, but what marvelous professionals they were in that!”

Stony Brook run evokes a timeless natural setting. Visitors meander along footpaths winding around a creek filled with water tumbling over rocks in a series of stepwise cascading falls, a natural ladder. To further enhance the experience, a still-operational nineteenth century paddlewheel gristmill perpetuates the art of grinding corn and brings one’s focus back in time. The mill utilizes the power of flowing water, but the water drops precipitously from a height much too great for fish to negotiate, so a concrete structure—a fish ladder—diverts the herring and provides manmade “steps” up to the pond.

Stony Brook Herring Run in Brewster with gulls lurking on the shore for a meal. Photo: S. Macfarlane

The abundance and importance of herring have long been acknowledged. Captain Charles Whitbourne, a seventeenth-century settler, reported the bounty of herring and the vast herring runs in his book The Travels of Captain John Smith: “…in April there is a fish much like a herring that comes up into the small brooks to spawn, and when the water is not knee deep they will presse up through your hands, …in such abundance as is incredible.”

In 1953, Henry C. Bigelow and William S. Shroeder elaborated on herring habitat in Fishes of the Gulf of Maine: “When the white man crossed the Atlantic probably there was no stream from Cape Sable to Cape Cod but saw its annual run of alewives unless they were barred by impassable falls near the mouth. Alewives are decidedly general in their choice of streams …[some] so small that one can almost leap across, and only a few inches deep.”

When European settlers arrived on the Cape, the Wampanoags taught them how to wrest the most from the poor soil by adding herring as fertilizer. Beans, squash, and corn, staple crops for the Native Americans, were what today’s organic farmers would call “companion plants.” The Wampanoags buried a herring, mounded the soil on top of it, and planted the seeds of all three vegetables in the small hills. As the fish decayed, it added nutrients to the soil. The corn grew tall, the strong stalks a perfect trellis for the beans to climb; the beans added nutrients, especially nitrogen, to replenish the soil; the squash meandered on the ground, the broad leaves shading the ground to prevent weeds from gaining the upper hand.

The Indians taught the settlers when to expect the herring to return and how to set traps in the creeks as the fish migrated upstream. The settlers learned the technique and farming method, and while not adept at fishing themselves, they knew herring as a food that had been important back in England.

Herring Habits

River herring, both alewives and bluebacks, spawn in quiet water and slow-moving streams but never in rushing water. The Cape’s glacial geology formed perfect habitat for them: numerous streams leading from the sea to freshwater ponds. The true number of these connections is unknown, but historic topographic quadrangle maps from any Cape town provide tantalizing clues.

After the herring are born in freshwater ponds, they swim to saltwater as very small fry, and stay at sea until they reach sexual maturity at age three or four. Then they swim back to the estuaries, where the salt and fresh waters meet. In the estuary, they find their natal stream, the same one in which they were born, and fight their way up to the fresh water, and there they spawn.

The understanding that herring return to their home creeks originated from efforts to reintroduce them to rivers that had become nonproductive. Adult spawners were released, and about four years later the next generation of spawning herring returned where there had been none in the intervening years, explained Bigelow and Schroeder.

Unlike salmon that die shortly after spawning, the spent herring do not linger in the freshwater ponds but turn around and swiftly swim back downstream, while others simultaneously struggle upstream for their turn to spawn. They require little time to acclimate, able to regulate the osmotic difference in their tissues between salt and fresh waters and then back to salt with incredible facility. Herring may return to their home creeks a second time a year later, but scale analyses show that only a small percentage live to spawn multiple times, John Hay writes.

At the Stony Brook run, the herring that survive the journey to spawn swim back down the stream to the mouth of Paine’s Creek. If they get there at an ebbing tide, the creek fades away to a trickle across the mile-wide exposed flats, leaving the herring as fair game for gulls flying overhead. After the effort of getting up the creek to spawn, they come to this fate. As the tide floods, the fish that come after them have enough water to get out to the deep bay and offshore beyond.

Back in the home ponds, the herring eggs incubate for about six days, with water temperature determining when the eggs hatch. A month later, when they are about three-quarters of an inch long, the tiny fry scuttle downstream to the estuaries, where they stay until they are at least three inches. Somehow, during their trek downstream, they imprint on their surroundings for future reference so they can return as parents. But summer is a time to eat or be eaten. Many of the tiny herring become food for an immense number of species within the estuaries, and then they must make it through the ordeal that follows at sea. If successful, then they too swim offshore, explained Bigelow and Schroeder.

Alewives Arrive

Farther north, the alewives are still in the Atlantic, making their migratory pilgrimage to other streams and rivers. Hundreds of thousands of them are swimming to one of the most prominent and picturesque herring runs in Maine, located in Damariscotta Mills.

In the 1700s, a double saw mill was built to use the power of the river that flows from Damariscotta Lake, down a set of falls to Great Salt Bay and on to the estuarine Damariscotta River. That mill blocked passage for the herring. In 1807, a fish ladder was constructed that provided an alternative route, bypassing falls.

Over the years, the run deteriorated to the point that the number of fish that could get up to Damariscotta Lake was severely limited. In 2007, the communities launched a comprehensive restoration project. At first, they took on the most critically deteriorated portions - a collapsed wall near the bottom, leaking pools and non‑functioning top pools.​ Just rebuilding the collapsed wall cost about $30,000. Clearly, they had embarked on a massive and very expensive project. By 2017, with financial help from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, restoration was completed at a cost of about $1,000,000.

The river splits near the base of the falls. Fish that go toward the falls, come to a barrier where they can go no farther. Those fish are corralled into metal containers, hoisted into a sort of sluiceway, where, at the end, they are harvested for fresh lobster bait and for food. If they had not been stopped by the barrier, they would have come to the falls with its 30 ft. drop and a 10-ft. dam immediately above.

High water flow with falls in the background – Photo: S. Macfarlane

But if the fish go to the other way, they come to the man-made run. A fish ladder that is both practical and aesthetically beautiful.

The run rises 42 feet over the course of 1500 feet. Sixty-nine pools, one leading to the next higher one, provide slightly higher rungs in the “ladder.”

After the concrete structures were built, they watched how it all worked and were disappointed. The fish struggled to negotiate the pools and many fish refused to continue. The project team learned that the smooth wall face caused problems with the water flow.

Now, the entire run is faced with rocks. The rocks mimic a natural stream bed and create eddies that slow and redirect the flow just enough to provide rest that helps them to climb up the next rung on their journey. The rocks are also more efficient to maintain. The labor required was immense and building the run in Maine winters was a challenging endeavor, and costly.

Restored Alewife Run in Damariscotta Mills, Maine; Photo S. Macfarlane

The return of alewives was not the only benefit. Herring are important for the entire coastal ecosystem. Located at the base of the food chain, they feed everything from larger fish to whales and seals, eagles and osprey to herons, and raccoons to bears. When the herring returned, so did other animals.

Every Memorial Day weekend, the community holds an alewife festival. It is a fund raiser with a road race, concert, food and fun. It attracts thousands of people who come to watch this miracle of thousands of squirming fish as they head up the run, pool after pool, rung after rung, to reach Damariscotta Lake and start a new generation. There, they will lay their eggs and come back down to continue their part in the cycle of life at sea.

see also: https://damariscottamills.org/

Adapted from Swirling Currents by Sandy Macfarlane with additional material

The March 3 press release from the Center said that more than 40 North Atlantic right whales were spotted in the southwest corner of Cape Cod Bay. Two of the whales had a calf with them. One was identified as Millipede (EgNo 3520). She is a 21-year-old who was first seen as a calf in 2004. This was her third calf. The last time she had a calf was in 2021. The calf with her this year (EgNo 5192) was documented on March 2 of this year. The second right whale mother was Mantis (EgNo 1620). She was first seen in 1986 but her age is unknown. This her eighth calf (EgNo 4520) also seen on March 2 in Cape Cod Bay.

The article from the Center included photos of the mother/calf pairs. I cannot use them as I do not have a federal research permit but the link below tells the story.

https://coastalstudies.org/news/ccs-researchers-observe-seasons-first-north-atlantic-right-whale-mothers-and-calves-in-cape-cod-bay/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQuc95leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFVMGZ1cWQxTGhMOGdtR2xpc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHktSq2A9RnQ5U9xRMNrF7J6wwwjwZ49C1g_p5ejYFXeoRFgB6oJtj-i-BKya_aem__D3nlQCbXvk_1n2Qy4SdEw

The news is exciting and there is cautious optimism. This year, the number of calves is the highest since 2015. Three years later, in 2018, I had a memorable experience. I wrote the following at the time.

On one extraordinary day in April of 2017, over 200 North Atlantic right whales were seen in Cape Cod Bay. They have been showing up yearly for quite a number of years now, chasing their primary food, tiny copepods, shrimp-like animals that occur in massive numbers in the winter.

Right whales are among the most endangered animals on the planet with slightly over 300 left world-wide. In fact, their population peaked in 2010 with a little over 450 individuals and their numbers have been dropping ever since.

Cape Cod Bay is designated as critical right whale habitat and there are some stringent regulations to protect the whales. No boat can venture closer than 500 yards to the animals, lobster pots cannot be put in the water before April 30 or later if whales are still in the bay, ships are warned when whales are in the area and must reduce speed to 10 knots and in 2008, shipping lanes to Boston were altered to avoid the area of greatest concentration of whales over Stellwagen Bank.

The Bay of Fundy in the Canadian portion of the Gulf of Maine is similarly designated as critical habitat for these whales. After they leave Cape Cod Bay, usually in late April, they used to head up to the Bay of Fundy.

But their habits have changed. They stayed in Cape Cod Bay later, not leaving until mid-May. That change in their habit angered lobster fishermen who could not put their pots in the water until the whales left and that meant loss of income in the beginning of the season when they needed money after the long winter. Lobstermen knew the whales were highly endangered and grudgingly complied but keeping their pots out of the water was economically challenging.

Then, when the whales did leave, fewer of them were seen in the Bay of Fundy. And where did they go instead? Farther north, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence where they had only rarely been seen in the past.

They now avoid the Bay of Fundy and go to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, an area that was not designated as critical habitat. Surveys from 2015 to 2019 demonstrated that the whales are returning to the Gulf annually. Moreover, they are spending five months in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A study released in December 2021 confirmed that the Gulf of St. Lawrence was being used by 40% of the right whale population, a new wrinkle in right whale management.

Was this dramatic whale behavior a result of a shift in feeding habits and a sign of warming seas?

Their arrival in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, coincided with an increased number of dead and critically injured whales. Since 2017, 34 dead whales have been confirmed, 21 in Canada and 13 in the US, and 16 critically injured whales, bringing the total to 50 whales. That number prompted a declaration in the US and Canada of an Unusual Mortality Event (UME), triggering an investigation to determine what was happening. Some deaths were from obvious entanglements in fishing gear and others showed evidence of blunt trauma, presumably from ship strikes.

The Gulf of St. Lawrence is one of the most highly traveled shipping regions in North America, servicing ports through the Great Lakes. It’s also highly productive for fisheries including massive crab traps. Both crab traps and lobster pots require vertical lines between the traps on the bottom and buoys at the surface, the kind of gear that entangles whales. The Canadians were taken by surprise. They know they have a lot of work ahead of them to establish guidelines to protect the whales somehow. And there isn’t much time left for the species. Losing one whale a year puts the population in grave danger especially if it is a female. There were no calves born in 2017. Seventeen whales were lost in one year. A population of slightly over 300 can’t afford to lose many individuals. It’s estimated that they may be extinct within about 30 years. Extinct. Gone forever.

Winter came again. In April of 2018, right whales were close to our shore. There had been an article in the Boston Sunday Globe about the plight of the whales. Duxbury Beach provided a front-row seat to watch for them. I got a phone call from a friend who saw about 20 of them on a day when a lot of right whales had been spotted off Marshfield. The next day I went down to the beach with my binoculars at about 6 PM and saw a bunch of them about a half mile from shore.

A day or so later, I wasn’t sure if they would still be there. Then I went to dinner and heard on the news that they were in Plymouth Harbor. Lobstermen again had to hold off putting their pots out. The delay was taking money out of their pockets.

I went back to the beach after dinner. This time I only had my travel binoculars and they are nowhere near as good. But there was one whale cruising about a quarter mile offshore, clearly visible with the naked eye. It was swimming in a straight line, following a slick ribbon of calm water. The right whales swim slowly near or at the surface with their gargantuan mouths open, constantly taking in water loaded with the tiny copepods that they strain through their very fine sieves on their massive baleen plates hanging down from the roof of their mouths. This one was so close I could see its open mouth. It cruised back and forth along the same line, reminding me of my own swimming habits when I routinely swam back and forth along the shore.

I scanned the beach toward Plymouth and spotted two more whales. I watched them for a while and switched back to number 1. When I switched again to the southern pair, I caught a glimpse of a splash farther offshore.

I was shocked at what I saw. A whale flipped its tail fluke high in the air in an incredible acrobatic move. Then the tail went back into the water with a great splash. But it did it again. And again. Ten times without much of a break between moves, it raised its tail and slammed it back down in the water. I wondered about how it could generate that much power with the tail, high out of the water and completely vertical. The force was so great when the tail hit the water again that even half a mile away it reverberated as a dull shot or the sound of firecrackers off in the distance. Sometimes, it was so high out of the water that the tail looked like it was going to go over completely in a backward summersault, but it went back in the water the way it came out. There was almost no break between moves. The tail came down and went back up again within seconds. How could the massive animal move that fast to get the tail vertical again? What an incredible display of power and agility for an animal roughly equivalent to three elephants lined up trunk to tail and weighing about 55 tons. I have since learned that the flexibility of the vertebrae and muscle strength is amazing. They can actually raise nearly half their body to a 90° vertical position in the air.

After the first 10 times, it must have taken a breath and exhaled a V-shaped plume of water. Then it went back to tail slapping. It kept doing this maneuver with three to five tail slaps and an occasional 8 or 10. I was transfixed. What was that behavior all about?

Apparently, the gymnastic movement is not unique to right whales. Many species of whales are known to tail-slap though it is not common to see. Whale people talk about the behavior in northern and southern right whales, humpbacks, and greys but there may be others. They may be mammals, but they don’t tell us what they are up to. The most common explanation or theory is that whales use tail slapping for communication. I can buy that. If I could hear what sounded like the report of a rifle shot in air from half a mile away, imagine what the pounding of tail flukes of a massive right whale brought down on the water surface with tremendous force and speed sounds like under water where sound travels very far.

I thought of the dots and dashes of Morse Code. In this case, ten slaps, three, five, three, stop, breathe; eight, five, four, three, stop, breathe; two, five, nine. Was it whale code? After maybe 10 minutes of repeated tail slapping, the whale stopped. I saw a few spouts after that but never saw the whale again. But what a treat to have witnessed that behavior.

I shifted my gaze to number 1 again and it was still there. Finally, I decided to go home and left the whales to feed on the schools of tiny copepods in peace, glad that, at least for now, these giants and their behavioral mysteries are still in our midst.

Addendum:

Since 2021, the population has mostly inched upward, a hopeful sign but not enough for a population rebound and not back to the 450 high of 2010. 2021 – 364; 2022 – 356; 2023 – 372 and 2024 – 384. According to NOAA, there are approximately only 70 reproductively active females. It would take 50 or more calves born for at least five years in a row to begin to turn the population decline around.

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It was wild. I couldn’t see much. In my living room, there were two windows that each had a relatively clear spot of approximately 8” X 2” that allowed me to actually see a tiny bit of what was happening outside. The remainder of every window and door was caked with snow. The furiously driving sideways snow created a thick white veil that obscured what limited visibility I had. I caught glimpses of the top branches of white pine trees as the tempestuous gales toyed with them, daring them to hang onto their trunks. In the silence of my powerless house, the wind provided the music, gusts with higher notes, paused between in a somewhat lower tone.

The projected accumulation map indicated that this area may be close to the jackpot area of close to 30” of snow. We didn’t know how close we got to that until the next day. It was impressive and just about at the 30” mark but with all the blowing and drifting, it was hard to tell. A friend called with an alert on her phone that the town had requested help from the National Guard. The Governor had issued a state-wide state of emergency and travel ban ahead of the storm. The caution proved to be an appropriate response to the forecast.

It’s been an interesting winter so far. It started off very cold in December and several significant bouts of measurable snow.

A few weeks before the blizzard, a rainstorm changed to fluffy snow that frosted branches on the trees. The next day it was bright and sunny with clear blue skies. From my living room, my peripheral vision picked up the motion of birds flying in two directions, some flying to the woods I could see and others going in the opposite direction toward something in the courtyard I could only see from my bedroom window. The individual birds flew back and forth apparently on a mission.

From the bedroom, I got a better picture of what that mission was. A bunch of birds were congregated in and around trees in the courtyard, some of which were crabapples, with desiccated fruit left on the bare branches. I looked more closely at the birds. Surprisingly, they were robins.

Robins in winter? I needed to find out more. The old standby - A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern and Central North America by Edward Rowe Forbush and John Bichard May did not disappoint.

I learned that robins are pretty much solitary birds in the spring and breeding season, but they flock together in the winter and forage on fruit left over from the summer. They are constantly on the move but many of them spend the entire winter in the New England latitudes, roost among evergreens and feed on winter berries. To see robins in winter is a surprise to many people who gush at the first sign of a robin each year and wonder aloud whether the sighting is a sign of an early spring.

The ones I saw were flying in and out of white pines. The book said sometimes they are seen in open fields when snow has vanished during a thaw. That made some sense too because they are normally ground feeders and while some robins were in the crabapple trees, I didn’t see them voraciously picking the fruit off the trees.

But there was a line of different species of leafless trees across the courtyard and snow under them. Robins flocked to those trees, seemed to shake something loose and either fly down to the ground themselves or provide forage for their comrades pecking at the ground. When they had had enough, the patch of snow had turned brown with all the droppings and after about half an hour, all the birds were gone too.

On the calm day before this storm, I noticed a smaller flock of robins roosting high in a few deciduous trees. I wondered if they would come back to check the crabapples again since I know they didn’t get them all. But I didn’t see them.

The guide book related that the robins that nest here in the summer go south in the winter to the southern tip of Florida and sometimes in Key West. The ones that overwinter in New England are probably “hardy birds” that nest in Labrador.

When I got up in the morning after the blizzard, to my utter delight, the windows were mostly clear or clear enough to look out anyway to see how much snow there was. Across the courtyard, the side of the three-story building was still caked with snow and long upside-down icy spires hung from the roof. Trees were festooned with white, each branch distinctive against the solid side of the building.

It was a magical winter wonderland. Soon, the sound of snowblowers and a bobcat machine impacted some of the magic while their operators did their job to move the snow to allow us humans to get around.

Then, close to sunset, I saw motion out the livingroom window and went to the bedroom. Robins were back, flitting from tree to tree, some flying out of my field of vision and then they reversed course and headed for the white pines, one at a time. About fifteen minutes later, 40 to 50 of them arrived at the pines en masse. Apparently feeding time had ended. Early the next morning, they were back. It was heartening to see them fly from tree to tree while we humans started to dig out on the ground.

Wherever they were in the worst of the storm, they had survived and were going about the business of living as usual.

Land or sea, for me it’s always a treat to learn something new about the world around me, to be curious enough when I see something that I find out of the ordinary, to find out more.

And on a day, when Mother Nature flexed her muscles in such a stupendous fashion, it reminded me that all it takes to humble us is snow, cold, and wind. When the power we depend on so heavily, that we thought was a given, was taken away, it was replaced with a gift. We had time to observe a common bird we thought we knew behaving in an uncommon way.

Robins, the harbinger of spring, turn out to be here all winter, feeding on fruit long since past its prime. Robins in the winter in New England. I never noticed. What a revelation.

Before the twenty inches of snow that fell recently, I went down to the beach. It is my favorite time of year to do that. In the middle of the week there’s almost no one there and since the access bridge is closed, it is a long way around to get there. But to me, it’s worth it. Few birds were flying but there were ducks and some gulls on the shore or in the water. I didn’t see any buffleheads, but I did see a few eiders. They reminded me of winters many years ago and about 30 miles east.

Eiders were a winter presence. They spent most of the time in the ocean but in the early morning, large flocks arrived to the harbor where they fed on their favorite food, mussels. At the time, mussels were considered trash, a competitor of clams that should be eradicated. In the 1940s, the shellfish constable urged people to get rid of them any way they could. But in the war years, when rationing was a fact of life and protein scarcer, the same constable told residents that mussels were a good substitute and plentiful. As soon as the war was over, he changed his tune again and urged eradication.

Towns have the authority to regulate shellfish under state law. Mussels weren’t regulated locally, but they weren’t even mentioned in the state shellfish regulations either. Mussel harvesting was perhaps the last free enterprise left in the local fishing world.

I had just started my job with the shellfish department in the mid-1970s. In the winter of 1976-77, the whole town - bays, coves and rivers, with the exception of a few swift-running channels - was frozen for 14 consecutive weeks. The only open water was a small channel leading to a salt pond that was constricted by an old rock dam, used in the 1800s to power a mill, that now keeps the tide flowing with increased velocity.

Since there was nowhere else to harvest shellfish, a few men decided to harvest mussels even though they weren’t worth much. But there was a limited market in New York where they were popular with certain ethnic groups. For 10 weeks, 12 guys harvested about 12,000 bushels from approximately one acre using pitchforks. Mussels grow attached to one another so taking a clump would probably have juveniles attached. When they got to a dealer, someone would have to clean them, and the little ones would be discarded. If they cleaned them on the shore, the seed would live for another day. The fishermen broke up the clumps, and anything attached, on the shore. They earned about $3.00/ bushel. It was something to keep them going.

One fisherman, who had been around when folks were urged to get rid of mussels, decided that he and his son had an easier approach. They used a scallop drag, and emptied the contents of the drag, mussels and all the other stuff, into bushel bags and they got about $1.25/bushel.

Once the ice left, some men fished for other things but the father and son, continued with the mussels in the channel. They essentially wiped them out, but their method also destroyed the habitat – there was nothing left for mussels to attach to. The channel never came back in any way close to what it had been.

Mussels gained favor in local restaurants and patrons were requesting them. The small channel was not the only place that had mussels. More people started harvesting them. The cleaning technique became more precise and the price steadily increased.

We saw this activity as an opportunity to add a species that could be harvested year-round if managed. We suggested some regulations. The fishermen insisted against the suggestion. So the Selectmen said no, leave it alone. It would put an end to the free harvest.

But a funny thing happened.

A few years went by, the price was high, lots of mussels had been harvested and the standing crop was dwindling with an increase of harvesters. Fishermen asked for regulations. The Selectmen agreed and they were enacted to limit the daily harvest, establish a minimum size and require cleaning them on-site to put the seed back in the water – the same regulations we had suggested.

Recreational harvesters were getting mussels too. One year, when the summer population had arrived, we received a lot of comments and complaints that the commercial fishermen had fished out the mussels over the winter. These folks had seen mussels on a particular bar the year before that were too small to harvest and had looked forward to the next year. But the flat that had been black with mussels was brown and barren. The mussels were gone.

“It wasn’t them,” I said over and over. “It was the eiders. It’s their favorite food and they were here day after day all winter diving for them at high tide.” Few people believed me.

Bare bar that had mussels in the summer

Eider ducks over a mussel bar in the winter

Eiders can dive deeper than 30 feet but will forage in shallower water. Seeing a few eiders recently made me wonder if mussels were coming back to to this bay. They are nearly non-existent in the estuary where I worked. Shellfish sometimes have natural population fluctuations for long periods. Most of the time, their absence is puzzling. So many possible factors could be at play.

Resource management is always challenging. Mussels were no different. Especially when eiders need them as much as humans want them.

Adapted from my book, Rowing Forward, Looking Back

From one window, I saw a mixed forest of both pines and deciduous trees. With the leaves gone for the winter, the snow stuck to branches in such a way that every branch and twig was blanketed by the snow. The effect was stunning. Without the outline, the trees blur and merge into one another, but with the snow outlining every detail, each one stands out as an individual member of the collective.

From another window, I saw mostly pines. Instead of reaching for the sky as they normally do, each of their frosting-covered branches pointed ground-ward, weighed down by heavy snow sitting on top. The needles and branches joined forces to act like a flexible hammock holding a thick white tufted comforter.

The scene lasted a few hours. The temperature began to climb a bit, and the snow stopped falling.

The twigs were the first to lose their coating. The more vertical branches were next and finally the larger branches. The pines took longer to lose their white mantle but by noon, snow continued to fall from the trees but less frequently and in lesser amounts. The moment of winter beauty had passed.

But this winter has had more moments. Week-long cold snaps have been cold enough to freeze local ponds. The solid ponds lured skaters to learn new skills or practice techniques or establish the goal net as soon as it was safe to do so (and maybe a bit too early for some less cautious souls). Grownups practiced their skills too, choosing just the right place, they hoped, to bore a hole for ice fishing.

The fringes of the bays and sometimes the bay itself froze too, when there were many days of way-below freezing temperatures.

As I drove past the vast marshes, they sparkled. Tufts of tawny grass rose above glistening ice. There were few birds even though it was a calm day. But with so little open water, it was little wonder that birds were not visible.

Thick ice rimmed the bay shores. At each low tide, the intertidal area freezes and the successive high tides push the ice farther and farther inland.

A few days later all had changed. King tides pushed the ice covering the marsh to the edges and warmer temperatures melted the ice on the intertidal areas. Water was visible in the creeks, and the east edge of the bay had a much smaller fringe of ice.

Hidden and almost perfectly camouflaged, a snowy owl, seen with binoculars, turned its head a couple of times, the only indication that it was not a pile of snow and ice.

Maybe it is the fleeting nature of the winter wonderland that makes it so magical. We know it won’t last a full three months – our winters are tempered by the sea around us in contrast to those of our New England neighbors who live in higher elevations or to our north. And although winter can be difficult, the sun rises higher every day, its warmth getting stronger.

The pace is slower at this time of year and can be a welcome change. People, bundled up, talk about the weather and are hunkered down. But they pore over the weekly calendar of activities and cultural, informative, educational, religious/social and sometimes political or civic events that will bring them out to meet other people.

Although one might not think so looking out the window on a dreary winter day, winter is the beginning of both the calendar and the regenerative year, when the sun returns from the south to begin the growth cycle again, marked by the lengthening days.

Sun Bear, a Chippewa medicine man and Indian leader wrote about a vision in a book called The Medicine Wheel. He saw people entering a sacred circle of a medicine wheel from each of the four compass directions as they travel their life’s path. In the book, the compass directions were further divided into three periods coinciding with the moon. In that way, he divided the year into moons, each with its animal, plant, and mineral totems, spirit keeper, color and complement. Entering the medicine wheel thereby represents birth. Similar to astrological signs, this book describes how the signs were tuned into the seasons.

All three periods of winter are found in the north quadrant. For the period of mid-December to mid-January, the moon is called Earth Renewal. The following month to mid-February is called Rest and Cleansing and the last month is called Big Winds, a period we also know by the howling winds. The remainder of the year is similarly divided. Spring, a turn to the eastern quadrant begins at the end of March as Budding Trees, then Frogs Returning and Planting; Summer, in the south, is Growth, Berries and Harvest; and autumn, in the west, is Migration, Freezes and Snow.

I find comfort tuning into earth rhythms like those in the book and maybe that is why I feel comfortable in this period of rest and cleansing. Winter is a time of rest, to reflect on the previous year and prepare for the new one. It goes by as fast as any other time of year but seems calmer after the holidays and reminds me to enjoy the slower pace but also pay attention and get procrastinated things done for spring will be here before we know it.

People who don’t like the cold and snow of New England winter and leave to avoid it also miss the glory of this quiet season. Yes, there can be extra challenges. But all it takes is a tour around or a walk in the brisk air to observe nature’s wonders in every season. And winter has its own special beauty.

Rest and Cleansing. I like that.

I often saw hawks. The big oaks and pines in the yard gave plenty of perching space to two massive red-tail hawks I frequently saw flying through the trees or perched near one another on adjoining trees. Construction equipment in the neighborhood was a bit more noise than they would like, apparently, for I didn’t see them again.

But an encounter with a red-tail in 2013 made an indelible impression.

I was in the process of making a major life change, moving from the town where I had spent all of my adult life and childhood summers. I was still trying to decide what my next move would be and had pretty much settled on an independent living community south of Boston. But I still wasn’t sure it was the right choice for me.

I drove to a town landing that was highly significant to us and where I often went when I needed to work out a problem. On this day, I looked at the water, the exposed sand bars and sand dunes of the barrier beach beyond and muttered the question, “Is this a good idea?” adding that a sign would be really helpful.

I left the shore a couple of minutes later and drove up the hill. I glanced left and noticed a big red-tailed hawk sitting on the top of a telephone pole. Suddenly, the hawk swooped down in front of my car. But instead of flying across my path, it turned and headed in the direction I was traveling. I uttered, “That was quick. Thanks.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buteo_jamaicensis_456104653.jpg Michael Newlon; iNaturalist

I had read that in indigenous cultures, a hawk that behaves in that manner is a messenger, if you choose to acknowledge it. I like that concept. I interpreted the hawk’s visit as an affirmative to my question, that I was making a good decision.

The hawk had flown straight in front of me. Follow me straight down this path as you are doing, it seemed to tell me.

Several years later, I saw another hawk. This time when I saw the hawk, I wasn’t aware of a particular problem I was trying to solve but we were living through social upheaval that was sure to have long-term repercussions.

I didn’t know that thinking about the problems I was paying attention to, social, political, physical, and personal and on a global scale, were too much to absorb and they were robbing me of critical positive energy that I needed to thrive.

I didn’t know that a hawk sighting could bring me back to some sort of equilibrium that the earth will still turn daily and revolve around the sun yearly. Having patience and slowing down are also hawk messages, both of which I needed.

So, when I saw the hawk, I said hello to it, that I hadn’t seen him in a long time and thanked him for coming to me.

Hawks are not the only birds who are considered messengers. There are other birds that have a similar effect. Snowy owls are in that category.

The first time I saw a snowy owl was many decades ago on a cold but bright sunny February Sunday.

We decided to take a ride down the beach. For us, that meant traveling down the sand road on the barrier beach. The beach was relatively empty of people – I think in the entire ten miles of beach we may have seen about 5 other groups that day. It’s a very different place in winter compared with the summer when folks with over-sand vehicle permits, beach walkers, surf-casting fishermen, camp owners and RV campers descend on the area.

After a few miles, one of us spotted a snowy owl sitting on a fencepost about 50 ft. from the road. We stopped to watch the white bird with some dark splotches, binoculars passed from person to person. Aside from swiveling its head more than 180°, it didn’t move. We watched it for about 10 minutes, gratefully transfixed to see it. Finally, we left before it did.

The first winter after I moved, I had heard that snowy owls were routinely transported from Logan Airport, where they posed a danger to themselves and aircraft, to Duxbury Beach. A resident offered to take me down the beach and very near the end of the spit, we spotted an owl on the roof of a house.

On another occasion, I drove down the beach one winter day and was rewarded with seeing a snowy owl standing on the southern point of marsh hummock close to the water and far away from people. I would have missed it because it blended in with icy patches. But I noticed a person sitting on another high point with a long-lens camera across from a flooded lowland. I followed his line of sight till I saw a splotch of white that looked different from the ice and my binoculars confirmed the owl. It remained motionless and when I came back from my trip farther down the beach, two cars were parked at the turn-out I had used and people had joined the photographer looking at the owl that had not budged.

Another time, I saw one almost perfectly camouflaged. It was very near the parking area and yet no one had stopped. I suspected that others hadn’t seen it. Often, the owls are spotted on the bay side of the spit but this one was on the ocean side, in the lee from the biting wind.

But one day, I went to the beach to get what I call “a water fix.” It helps me to recharge. I was parked at the top of a rise that crosses the dune from the road to the outer beach. There was a gate across preventing anyone to access the outer beach and because it was mid-week, there were very few people at the beach. I stopped there, keeping an eye out for other vehicles that might be coming, and watched the rhythms of the ocean. Unexpectedly, an owl landed on the fencepost not more than 10 feet from the hood of my car. I had shut off the engine, window was up and I just sat and watched the owl. It was mostly white with some dark bars on its chest and outer wings. It checked out the area, surveying the landscape all around. The fencepost wasn’t high, but it was the highest point around, providing a perfect perch.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snowy_Owl_(Bubo_scandiacus)_(23438527612).jpg

Owls are messengers like red-tail hawks to some Native American cultures. They are often associated with death and their appearance can be a source of fear or comfort. But their message may not be associated with a person. Rather, it could be the end of a situation, ushering in something good. Was this another time that I was receiving a message? I interpreted my encounter that as yes. I received the message of clarity on a problem. Once I acknowledged receipt of the message, I thanked the owl for delivering it to me. Then it took flight. With a wingspan of about 5 feet and having it so close to me, it was a magnificent sight. And one I will always remember.

Owls and hawks. Precision hunters. One during the day and the other at night. And both aerial messengers. I feel very lucky to be a recipient of their timely visits.

I wondered how it was possible that the ice could freeze in such a way to appear in intricate designs.

Then one winter day a few years ago, I had an early appointment and knew I had to allow extra time to heat up the car. But as I got my scraper out, I stopped in my tracks and got in to look at the windshield from the inside. What I saw was nature’s incredible handiwork.

Several years earlier, I had read about fractals, geometric designs that are repeated in exact replicas. Fractals are often found in nature. Broccoli and cauliflower florets. A chambered nautilus. A pinecone. A pineapple. Branches of a tree. Leaves. A hydrangea. A snowflake. A fern. But I never expected fractal ferns to show up on my car that frosty morning.

Both the hood and the windshield were festooned with stunningly delicate designs. It was as if someone had pressed live ferns into soft ice and then removed them and the images froze overnight, in every minute detail. I couldn’t bear to scrape the windshield or turn on the defroster. Instead, I sat mesmerized by the exquisitely beautiful image.

The artistic wonder directly in front of me was a vertical frond covering the glass from the top of the windshield to the bottom and about eighteen inches across. A mid-rib supported a series of mini ferns at right angles, evenly spaced on each side of the mid-rib and opposite one another. Each one extended outward and slightly upward. Each mini fern had offshoots that exactly imitated the larger version, the design repeated over and over. Even in its miniscule size, the smallest one at the tip of the frond was the exact image.

Every intricate part of the leaf from the stem outward to the tip of each leaf segment looked as though it was etched into the glass by a master craftsperson. The mid-rib, the veins, the dainty crenulated edges with delicate points were evident as if finely crafted by an Exacto®-knife stroke.

Shifting my gaze slightly to the middle of the windshield, a second frond slightly overlapped the one I was studying. It was a perfect replica, aligned in exactly the same way. Next to that was another leaf. Those three extraordinary fern fronds completely covered my windshield, their creation magical and mysterious.

What alignment of moisture and temperature and maybe other factors caused this etherial creation?

Taking time to pay attention to the world around us can yield some surprising and wonderful experiences. A photo would have helped others to see what I saw but I was so engrossed in looking at the extraordinary artwork in front of me that I couldn’t turn away. I didn’t need a photo.

I still don’t know how it is possible that the ice could freeze in the shape of fern fronds on my windshield and on the hood of my car. Not only were they intricate but they were exactly alike. There may be a rational explanation, but I prefer to think of it as a mystery of nature.

An ice sculpture on the windshield was a positive sign to me that Nature still operates independent of us.

And that makes me smile.

Reluctantly, I turned the defroster on high and watched as the miracle in front of me slowly morphed from a white intricate design obscuring my view out the window to a dull gray veil, disappearing into water droplets, which the windshield wiper erased completely.

“I threw a drag over today.”

“Oh yeah?”

“There’s a few out there. Keep it to yourself.”

“ ‘Bout time. We haven’t had a good season in ages.”

Scallop season was fast approaching. Every year, soon after most of the summer tourists had left Cape Cod, fishermen began thinking about scallops. Illegal to harvest until later in the fall, fishermen nonetheless took a chance during early mornings or on foggy days, when shellfish constables were unlikely to see them, to do a “test drag,” looking for the succulent bivalves. If they found some legal scallops, they tried to keep it to themselves. But word eventually got out, and before long, “scallop fever” – the anticipation for a good scallop season – gripped the community.

Fishermen checked their gear, made repairs, and got ready. Then, on October 1 for Cape Cod Bay, Columbus Day for Nauset or November 1 for Pleasant Bay, whichever body of water had the scallops that year, they thronged to every landing and headed out at dawn as if someone had fired a gun to start the race.

There is nothing quite like opening day of scallop season when scallops are abundant. The scallops seem to cause an irrational emotional reaction in people. They get all worked up almost to a frenzy anticipating the scallop season, especially if there is a hint that there may be a good year ahead. So, if the rumors proved true, it was cause for excitement all over town.

Bay scallops (Argopecten irradians irradians) are quirky in abundance – good one year and very poor for the next several years, and then an inexplicable peak in numbers. A good scallop year gives an economic jolt to the fishing community that allows it to stay afloat during winter when money is usually scarce. Everyone in town benefits from a good scallop year because of the ripple effect from the fishermen they hire to open (shuck) the scallops, the markets and restaurants that sell them, the businesses that supply the gear, and all the way to the people they pay for past bills.

One year, scallops were located in a relatively small area of Cape Cod Bay, within a mile from shore, but straddling town boundaries of Orleans and Brewster. The only landing place was Rock Harbor in Orleans. Orleans and Eastham had a joint fishery, created when Orleans split off from Eastham as a separate town. Brewster had no harbor. So, fishermen from three towns were all able to harvest the scallops. It was a once-in-a-generation occurrence and while the scallops were small, they were plentiful and everyone did well. However, Cape Cod Bay was notorious for having swift changes in weather conditions and there were small boats out there that tempted fate. They courted disaster but luckily for the few weeks that weather allowed harvest, no major mishaps took place.

In Pleasant Bay, the best year was in the early 80s. Three years saw abundant harvests of 4,000 bushels worth nearly $200,000. But in 1983, there was a virtual bonanza. No one had seen anything like it. When the season ended, 37,500 bushels were harvested at a value of $1,550,000. There were a lot of new trucks driving through town. It never happened again.

Bushel totes of scallops

Twenty-five years later, the memory was still strong of that past year. November 1 was a beautiful fall day. Low tide was early in the morning and by 8 AM, the landing at Portanimicut was full – cars and trucks with trailers lining the right side of the road. Just offshore, the sight was one unfamiliar to anyone moving to town after 1983. A dozen or more 14-25 ft. boats of all descriptions, pulling drags, motored slowly among the few remaining moored recreational boats. Family permit holders, allowed one bushel a week, walked along the shore, each one tethered to a bushel wire basket floating inside an inner tube. A man with a kayak approached the landing with his catch while another man in a dinghy, leaned over the side of his tiny craft, quahaug scratcher in hand, tempting fate with only a couple of inches of freeboard.

Twenty-five years earlier, a man watching the activity at the landing would have been one of the first men out on the water, but this day he was ashore. When asked why, he said simply, “I don’t have a boat.”

But it would take more than a boat to get a commercial limit of scallops – it would take a license. Obtaining a commercial license just to get scallops would take an act of faith because commercial licenses were only available from January 1 until April 30 of each year. Since scallops had been nearly non-existent for the intervening years, few had faith in their return. But for those who bought a $100 license that year, they were rewarded. How long the scallops would last and where they would be found was anyone’s guess .

The bigger question was why that year? For Pleasant Bay, the answer may have resided in dramatic changes in the bay over the previous two years.

In April 2007, a storm punched a hole in the Nauset barrier beach about a mile north of an historic 1987 breach. The new cut caused the loss of beach camps, but water quality improvements shared the press coverage. Stronger currents, clearer water, and greater abundance of eelgrass, were some obvious changes but the change in eelgrass meadows may relate to the appearance of scallops.

Scallops prefer to attach to eelgrass when they are tiny – barely visible to the naked eye. They attach to the blades of grass by use of a strong byssal thread, similar to the way mussels attach to rocks, sand or each other. By attaching to the eelgrass, the baby scallop keeps out of harm’s way of crawling crabs.

Both eelgrass and scallops require high water quality to survive and thrive and are extremely sensitive to environmental changes, especially those caused by humans. They are key species for estuarine health and scallops remain an icon of the shellfish industry. Environmental/biological responses to physical changes often take several years.

Eelgrass meadow

But timing is everything. According to researchers with the US Geological Survey who had been monitoring eelgrass in Pleasant Bay for several years prior to the new breach, eelgrass reproduces both by spreading rhizomes below the sediment surface and by setting seeds in the summer that sink to the bottom. The seeds need appropriate environmental conditions to germinate and grow. The April breach led to increased flushing, higher tides, clearer water – all conditions for improved water quality. Seeds germinated, grew and by the middle of the summer of 2007, the eelgrass population had expanded significantly. By the summer of 2009, the grass beds were extensive throughout the bay. But there were also some signs of deterioration. Seaweed was growing at the base of the grass and marine growth was visible on the blades. Very healthy eelgrass has neither.

How could scallops repopulate in the bay when there had been so few for so many years? That question remains a mystery – no one has successfully unlocked the secrets of the bay scallop life history, and they remain enigmatic little creatures.

Their more familiar cousins, Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus), often just called scallops on restaurant menus, live in deep water offshore and spawn multiple times.

But bay scallops only live for two years. State law mandates that they have gone through their once-in-a lifetime spawning in order to be harvested. They are born in the summer, stop growing in the late fall and go “dormant.” When the water temperature rises in the spring, they begin to feed again and grow. As they grow throughout spring and summer, the new shell becomes obvious as a raised ridge that may be further defined by a color change. That shell change is the definition of a raised annual growth ring. They spawn that summer, live through the winter and die the following spring. This life cycle is the reason scallop season is a winter fishery and goes from October 1-April 30. Legal scallops MUST exhibit a raised annual growth ring that is clearly visible on the shell because it means they have gone through their one and only spawning season and will be dead by the spring.

Scallops are functional hermaphrodites – producing both millions of eggs and sperm in the same animal. While it’s improbable for a scallop to fertilize its own eggs in the wild, it may help the population if fewer individuals are needed to produce lots of seed. The yo-yo population dynamics of scallops, peaks and valleys over time, makes them more unreliable to depend on than any other commercial estuarine species. When lots of adults produce seed, there should be a continuous supply year after year but for some reason, it never works out that way. A short lifespan and extreme sensitivity contribute to population fluctuations.

Scallops appeared in the Nauset estuary’s Town Cove in 1985. Their appearance there was also curious. There had been no breach in the beach to alter the placement of the inlet or change in Nauset’s flushing characteristics, and the inlet was as far north as it had ever been historically, resulting in convoluted channels to the Cove.

But on Saturday of Columbus Day weekend, scallop season opened to a gorgeous picture-perfect day. Low tide was in the morning. By about 10:00, cars lined the road to the landing for about a half mile. This time, it was recreational permit holders who would benefit most since a large area was set aside for them where commercial fishing could not take place. Commercial boats were relegated to deeper areas.

The scallops were smaller than those in Pleasant Bay, but no one seemed to care. Scallops were worth about $15.00/lb. in the market at that time and a bushel yielded about six pounds. So, the $5.00 resident permit fee that allowed a person to get a bushel a week, was a bargain, well worth the effort to get the scallops and shuck them all to stock the freezer.

Hundreds of people walked around in the shallow water, picking up “nuggets of gold” with quahaug rakes or even everyday garden rakes. Clad in jackets or sweaters, hip boots, waders or just old sneakers, they searched for areas where others may not have already been. Some took a half bushel since a bushel can get pretty heavy. What I remember most were the smiles and laughter as they came back to the landing on their way home. Such an unexpected treat for them.

It happened again over a decade later and the appearance of scallops was even more of a mystery. Eelgrass had disappeared from the estuary and had not returned. What had they attached to as juveniles? Why were there so many after an absence of so long? What had happened to produce them? The answers are elusive and we just don’t know.

The appearance of scallops caused a stir of another kind. Some folks suggested that the improved water quality in Pleasant Bay after the breach in 2007 meant that Mother Nature had provided her own wastewater management plan and that the town basically “lucked out” and didn’t need the plan to address future needs.

However, in 1987, the colossal breach changed the dynamics of the bay in a very similar fashion. Eelgrass increased but scallops did not magically appear in any significant quantity. Moreover, within a decade, water quality had significantly deteriorated even though the inlet had not migrated very far south. It was a short-lived reprieve but certainly not a permanent fix.

After many years of discussions, the town embarked on an expansive and expensive wastewater management plan, currently being implemented.

Historic Breach of 1987 Courtesy Kelsey/Kennard Photos

Martha’s Vineyard has always been a scallop-producing place. When production began to decline, as it did everywhere in SE Massachusetts, the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group worked to change the script. They developed a regional public shellfish hatchery to raise seed shellfish to replenish the bays of the island and included bay scallops along with quahaugs and oysters. After several years, they were successful in raising scallops in the hatchery and they developed nursery systems to ensure their survival in the field. They have been able to smooth the yo-yo population fluctuations through their efforts and scalloping remains a viable fishery.

Nantucket was the last place to experience the decline in scallops. They took a cue from the Vineyard success and have been able to keep their fishery going as well with their scallop culture efforts.

But unfortunately, bay scallops are extraordinarily susceptible to environmental changes. And changes in the coastal zone have been numerous and have severely degraded water quality. We don’t know all the mechanisms, but we do know we have caused harm to the seas around us. Restoration methods work but they take a lot of resources – financial, and the public will to carry out restoration programs over many years.

While restoration efforts can succeed, natural scallop production seems to be only a memory. We wish it were not so. We wish their diminished population was just the inexplicable nature of bay scallops. We wish to see “scallop fever” grip communities again.

But if farming these beautiful, enigmatic animals is the future, as it is with many other shellfish species around the world, then maybe we can enjoy these succulent morsels once more for a regionally produced product. And I smile at that possibility.

Demand for native bay scallops remains very high, supplies are often very low, and when they are in our midst, they are truly nuggets of gold.

But this season is not one for new trucks.

Adapted from the books Rowing Forward, Looking Forward and Swirling Currents, by Sandy Macfarlane

High and Dry - Strandings

A Frigid Midnight Trek

One night during the winter of 2014, Donna and Barry Tompkins received a call from the staff at Massachusetts Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. Sea turtles were likely to strand. A cold front had approached, the water temperature had dropped, and the air temperature had plummeted.

The Tompkins, two of over seventy-five volunteers who walk the beaches, knew their night patrol was crucial, since the temperature often drops precipitously overnight and the turtles, already stressed, can succumb in such conditions.

The northwest wind was fierce as the volunteers, dressed in multiple layers, headed eight or so miles from their cozy home to their assigned section of frigid beach – Rock Harbor to Skaket Creek in Orleans, a distance of about 1.5 miles.

It was about midnight when they arrived near high tide. Their insulated waders added weight to their already bulky winter jackets, making walking tiresome and difficult. They walked into the wind to begin their search in order to have it at their backs on their return.

While Barry waded in the ice-cold water, Donna pulled up her scarf to cover her mouth as she walked the tide line. With powerful spotlights, they painstakingly walked the high-tide line and the shallow waters, searching for the turtles that would likely be totally unresponsive, floating in the choppy water, or cast up high and dry.

Cape Cod Bay is an important summer feeding area for endangered species of sea turtles. Kemp’s ridley, the most highly endangered species, and Loggerheads routinely forage in Cape Cod Bay, and with green turtles, they are the primary species there. Leatherbacks, the largest of sea turtles, weighing 650 to 1,100 pounds, are rare visitors. All are imperiled.

Donna Tompkins stooped over a Kemp’s ridley turtle on Cape Cod Bay beach. Note clothes to indicate the time of year and weather. (Courtesy of Massachusetts Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary)

Coldblooded, mostly solitary reptiles, sea turtles journey thousands of miles from tropical waters to their summer feeding grounds in the bay. Leatherbacks feed primarily on jellyfish, following their prey that takes them from tropical to subarctic waters and from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

The loggerheads and Kemp’s ridley eat jellyfish, crabs, shellfish, and many other marine organisms but do not venture quite as far. Stomach content analyses of huge, 250-pound loggerheads have revealed green crabs, a major shellfish predator, and lots of spider crabs, but calico and hermit crabs have also been found. Moon snails and whelks are common food too and a loggerhead found in the Cape Cod Canal had lobsters. All of these species are common in Cape Cod Bay.

However, as sea turtles are rarely spotted at the surface, and since they hail from warmer southern waters, few people knew until the last quarter of the twentieth century, that so many of them spent summers in the bay. Were it not for the fact that hundreds of turtles have ended up stranded on Cape shores, their presence, or the bay’s importance to these animals might not be recognized.

Volunteers Save Stranded Turtles

We do not know the frequency of turtle strandings on Cape beaches in the past, although Wampanoag lore tells of turtles as gifts from the sea. We do know, from several decades of documentation by the Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary, that strandings have escalated. According to Bob Prescott, the sanctuary’s former director (ret.), six turtles were found stranded on local beaches in 1983. A few years later, the average annual count on Cape beaches was seventeen, a number that climbed dramatically during the following decades.

In 1999, 278 sea turtles were stranded. A little more than a decade later, the 2012 tally exceeded established records when nearly 350 sea turtles were retrieved from Cape beaches. One giant loggerhead weighed 125 pounds. Shocking numbers, yet no one anticipated the 2014 season. When it was all over, more than 1200 turtles had stranded.

Donna and Barry Tompkins are a link in the chain of over 200 trained volunteers who participate in the Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary’s recovery program. They fight bitter cold and biting wind to walk the beaches and marshes at high tide, day and night.

Donna spotted a Kemp’s ridley turtle lying on the accumulated bits and pieces of vegetation in the wrack line, fine sand clinging to its flippers and hard shell. She gently picked up the barely responsive turtle and moved it to a spot above the high-tide line. There she dug a depression for the turtle and covered it with loose pieces of seaweed to insulate it from the frigid wind, much colder than the water, and marked the spot with a large rock and stick so she and Barry could retrieve it on their way back to the car.

Then they spotted a giant loggerhead, fully fifty-five pounds, in a back corner of the marsh. They covered it with grass to insulate it as best they could and continued onward after finding several turtles that night.

Beach walkers who find a turtle are instructed to mark the spot and call the sanctuary’s hotline with specifics about the animal’s location. But the fifty-five- pound loggerhead was too big and needed extra hands to get it to the car. They called the sanctuary to report their find and give the location of the stranded giant.

Their assignment for the night ended, cheeks red and eyes watering from the biting wind, Donna opened a thermos of hot coffee.

Why are the turtles still in the bay when the weather turns cold? In spring, the coldblooded reptiles follow warm currents into the bay, but as the water cools in the fall, some turtles do not or cannot reverse the journey. By November, colder ocean water presents a physical barrier, and if they linger in the bay without the warmth they need to survive, the rapidly chilling water can be deadly.

Lethargic to Cold Stunned

Once the bay water temperature drops beyond their tolerance of 50°, it is too late for the turtles. They become “cold stunned,” Their metabolism shuts down. At that point the animals simply cannot swim, and they drift aimlessly in the bay, caught in currents that form a gyre.

Fierce north and northwest winds often accompany the plunging water temperatures, making the air temperature plummet even faster and drive the helpless turtles onto the beaches in the southeast corner of the bay, from Dennis to Truro. Once beached, the frigid air temperature deals an additional merciless blow to them.

Kemp’s ridley and large loggerhead turtles rescued in Wellfleet. (Courtesy of Massachusetts Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary)

For endangered species, the loss of every individual is critical.

Many People Make a Difference

Rescue efforts for these animals require a lot of work by many people. In addition to the beach patrols, volunteers help at the sanctuary to pack turtles in banana boxes and transport them to the New England Aquarium’s marine animal rehabilitation center in Quincy, nearly one hundred miles away. If retrieved alive, the turtles are slowly acclimated to warmer temperatures at the Quincy center. If they recover, they are released back into the wild. Over the years, the rehabilitation center’s recovery rate has been impressive and continues to improve.

In the shocking 2014 stranding, about two-thirds of them were alive, an astounding achievement and testament to the techniques and training of the Wellfleet team as well as the rehabilitative team at the New England Aquarium turtle hospital.

The Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary keeps meticulous track of the turtle strandings. Since 2014, there have only been three years when the tally was below 500 – 2016, 2017 and 2019. But in 2020, it jumped to more than 1000 and has averaged about 850 since then.

A portion of the turtles found in one day. Rescued turtles were packed in banana boxes ready for transport from Wellfleet to the New England Aquarium marine rehabilitation center in Quincy, nearly one hundred miles away. Survivors, once revived, are relocated to warm southern waters and released. (Courtesy of Massachusetts Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary)

The U.S. Coast Guard has become a partner in the rescue efforts, transporting turtles aboard their routine flights south.

There are so many turtles stranding in Cape waters that the NE Aquarium has partnered with other rehabilitative hospitals in southern states.

At Georgia’s Sea Turtle Center in Jekyll Island, visitors can look through windows to the hospital where they can see what the veterinarians do when turtles arrive. They can walk through the next phase of treatment where turtles are placed in tanks. On a recent visit there, one tank was empty but the sign was still there identifying the turtle that had recovered and had been recently released. It had arrived from Cape Cod, one of many received at the facility for rehabilitation.

In January, 2017, the Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary sponsored a screening of the film Saving Sea Turtles, Preventing Extinction by filmmakers Michelle Gomes and Jennifer Ting. The film follows the life history of Kemp’s ridley turtles, focusing on the plight of the turtles that strand on Cape beaches and the heroic efforts to rescue them. The two filmmakers happened to be on the Cape in 2013, became intrigued by the turtle story, and returned the following remarkable year. Narrated by renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle, the film later aired on the Boston PBS station, WGBH.

Why?

Turtles are not the only marine animal to end up on Cape Cod beaches. But Cape Cod has the highest rate of mass strandings in this country and is recognized internationally for this phenomenon as well.

Historically, pods of pilot whales have stranded in Cape Cod Bay. They were treated euphorically by Native Americans as a gift from Creator. Colonists had a different reaction – more of a treasured gift of cash for the oil in their blubber.

In 2012, 178 dolphins stranded at the beginning of the year and a record-breaking 350 turtles beached at the end.

The dolphin event earned Cape Cod the unfortunate and troubling distinction as one of the top three global hotspots for mass strandings of marine mammals. It shares that listing with New Zealand and Australia as places in the world with the greatest loss of life of beached aquatic mammals.

Two years later, turtle strandings skyrocketed to twelve hundred. When turtles are added to the equation, the global importance of Cape Cod for animal strandings becomes even clearer.

Many questions surround these incidents, but the primary one is simply, “Why?” Why do they get caught in the bay?

The reason that these mass strandings occur consistently in the elbow of Cape Cod Bay may reside in the bay’s configuration that goes back to the landform of the Cape itself.

Cape Cod as the Hook and Other Elements of Danger

When the glaciers retreated, the debris they left behind continued to influence the region in four dramatic ways: the land formed a hook; the currents swirling in the semi-enclosed Cape Cod Bay formed a counterclockwise gyre; the bottom topography, or bathymetry, formed an uneven surface of shallow bars and deeper pockets; and salt marshes with wide creeks at the mouth carved a path inland toward the ocean. Individually, these four aspects are diversions; but taken together, they form a formidable barrier.

Map of Cape Cod indicates four elements that may be responsible for strandings, singly or in combination. (Mapworks)

The hook-shaped peninsula and barb of built-up sand deposited in Provincetown trap some animals swimming within Cape Cod Bay.

The second component of the barrier is the currents. Cape Cod forms a physical biogeographic dividing line between the cold water currents to the north and warm currents to the south. As the cold Gulf of Maine water flows into Cape Cod Bay, it warms during the summer and circulates counterclockwise, forming a large gyre. Some of the summer animals enticed to feed within the bay may become trapped in this oceanic merry-go-round.

The third characteristic is the combination of bathymetry and depth. Much of the twelve hundred-square-mile bay is between one hundred and one hundred fifty feet deep, except for the eastern third of the bay. That part of the bay features five treacherous depth changes, three shallow and two deep.

Wellfleet’s Billingsgate Shoal is one of the greatest of these, acting as a secondary barb in Cape Cod’s hook, much larger and more of an obstruction than the sandbar in Provincetown. When the Pilgrims landed in Provincetown Harbor in 1620, this area was a sixty-acre meadow, not a sandbar. Now, Billingsgate Shoal, is a large, deceptively shallow submerged bar, extending in a triangle nearly five miles from Wellfleet in a southwesterly direction. At low tide, barely ten feet of water covers most of this sandbar. Heading south from deep water off Provincetown, a boater – or whale – comes abruptly and unexpectedly upon Billingsgate’s shallow eight square miles, surrounded on two sides of the triangle by about thirty feet of water.

The next obstacle is a tongue of sand covered by only twelve feet of water that juts out from North Eastham. This smaller sunken sandbar was the final resting place for the SS James Longstreet, a World War II Liberty ship placed there as a target ship for pilots training at nearby Otis Air Force Base, now part of Joint Base Cape Cod. Several decades of bombing and salt exposure later, it rusted into what looked like a giant piece of Swiss cheese. For years, the hulk of rusting metal on this shallow piece of the bay served as a manmade reef, sanctuary to numerous fish species and a powerful lure for fishermen and, perhaps, for marine animals as well.

The target ship SS James Longstreet after years of bombing practice and rusting away. (Courtesy of Noel Beyle)

Shoreward of the sandbar is the second area of deeper water, a wedge-shaped channel twenty feet deep.

last obstacle in water depth is a wide swath of tidal flats that line the coast from Brewster to Wellfleet and extend for a mile or more from shore. At high water, the ten-foot tide covers them, and as the tide ebbs back down to zero, dolphins and whales quickly lose the water depth and become stranded on the flats. These swift changes in depth, taking place a mile or more from the shore, trap animals chasing food on an ebbing tide.

The fourth bay feature affecting stranded animals is a series of marsh systems from Brewster to Wellfleet. It includes Rock Harbor that leads to Cedar Pond and was once a herring run, Boat Meadow Creek that was the entrance to Jeremiah’s Gutter (Cape Cod’s first canal that connected Cape Cod Bay with Nauset Harbor), and Blackfish Creek in Wellfleet that extends a mile or so inland. Blackfish Creek is named for the numerous pilot whales – blackfish – that met their fate stranded in this marsh, unable to turn back to sea.

Marsh creeks along Cape Cod Bay. Photo shows rippled sand on the left under water but at low tide, those sand flats extend at least a mile off the beach

What About …

Geography, currents, and bathymetry are obvious factors. Cape Cod acts as a hook, trapping animals within its confines where the other elements then become important. There may be additional factors, like animal instincts or magnetic cues that are not considered or are difficult to investigate. But for the turtles, weather and temperature play an enormous role, as a fifth obstacle especially as fall turns to winter in November and December.

Samuel de Champlain, an explorer and cartographer, produced a map of Nauset Harbor when he explored the Cape coastline in 1605.

Champlain’s map shows several rivers flowing into the harbor. One led to the Town Cove and another headed south, an outlet that no longer exists. But an eighteenth-century map clearly shows that this southern river flowed to Nantucket Sound. When the old waterways were connected, a single inland route existed. Thus, native people and the earliest settlers could travel from Cape Cod Bay to Nantucket Sound on the south side of the Cape without going around the tip of Cape Cod. By the late nineteenth century, Nantucket Sound was no longer connected to Nauset Harbor. The creek had filled in.

One wonders if boats were able to traverse this route, what about fish and marine animals? Did they utilize this waterway, too? Could it be possible that if whales went through Jeremiah’s Gutter, they developed a “homing instinct” like fish that return to their birth river? If so, did they somehow imprint the former passage as a route to the Atlantic? What if animals have some sort of “memory” that carries through generations? Or could there be an internal magnetic compass directing their movements, some sort of cue that signals where they should go? What if they head south, in the direction that was once the safe way to travel, and they bump into land instead?

Several decades ago, the movements of one turtle in Cape Cod Bay with a tracker attached showed it traversing the north side of Cape Cod from Sandwich to Orleans, back and forth several times. Was it searching for a passage south? We can only speculate.

Map of Nauset Harbor by Captain Samuel de Champlain from his voyage of 1605. The creek marked “F” may indicate a river that leads from Nauset Harbor to Pleasant Bay and eventually to Nantucket Sound. The river marked “G” probably indicates the channel to Town Cove and then to Jeremiah’s Gutter. Those two rivers connected Nantucket Sound to Cape Cod Bay through an inland passage that was used by the Nausets to travel from one body of water to the other without going around the treacherous Atlantic. The harbor has changed dramatically in four hundred years.

We watch dolphins from the safety of boats and marvel at their social interactions and their ability to ride the bow waves yet stay clear of boating dangers. We cherish stories of dolphins that guide lost mariners to safety, anthropomorphizing and even projecting mystical qualities upon these animals. We think of whales and dolphins as intelligent, sentient mammals and study them to determine the source of their remarkable skills. By watching these animals, we gain a tiny bit of insight into their world.

Then we see dead or dying whales, dolphins, and sea turtles helplessly stuck high and dry on a beach, huge hulks of animals that cannot exist in our element of air and out of their own – water. Modern people feel an affinity for whales and dolphins because they are, after all, mammals. We naturally want to help.

Turtles, however, are not like us at all. They are not mammals but coldblooded reptiles, a throwback to ancient animals. Yet our reaction to their distress is similar: a desire to save creatures that have survived on this planet for well over two hundred million years.

From the 1980s to the present, Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary has rescued over 10,000 turtles. That is a remarkable achievement for a private non-profit organization and its army of volunteers. Coupled with the tremendous effort of the New England Aquarium turtle rehabilitation facility, these two organizations have successively saved thousands of highly endangered turtles and returned them to their natural habitat.

We cannot prevent strandings of marine animals. Trying to save them after they land on the beaches is probably the only assistance we can offer. The plight of beached animals reminds us of how little we understand about the creatures that live in the vast ocean. It is their home, and we are only observers.

The strandings remind us that the sea governs what happens around Cape Cod now, just as it has always done. The ocean provides commodities that can be exploited for profit, but it also nourishes and feeds the soul as well as the body. It only depends on people’s attitudes at a given time to determine which path is the more favorable for humans to follow.

This article is adapted and updated from High and Dry: Strandings in the book: Sandy Macfarlane, Swirling Currents: Conflict, Compromise and Dynamic Coastal Change, 2018, Riverhaven Books

The following message is from Mass Audubon

If You Find a Cold-Stunned Sea Turtle

Do not assume a turtle is dead and do not put it back in the water—turtles that appear lifeless are often still alive. Please note that it’s illegal under both state and federal law to harass sea turtles or transport them without a permit.

If you come across a stranded sea turtle on the beach, please follow these simple steps:

1. Do not put it back in the water.

2. Carefully move the turtle above the high tide line. Never grab or hold the turtle by the head or flippers.

3. Cover it completely with seaweed or wrack—never cover it with sand.

4. Mark it with an obvious piece of debris like buoys, or driftwood, or draw a big arrow in the sand.

5. Call the Wellfleet Bay hotline at 508-349-2615, Option 2, to receive further instructions.

https://www.massaudubon.org/places-to-explore/wildlife-sanctuaries/wellfleet-bay/projects/sea-turtles

The water was enticing. Low tide, gentle waves at the edge of the sea instead of the often ferocious surf and devilish undertow at high tide. It was a picture-perfect morning on this stretch of Playa Guiones to begin our daily ritual. A dip before breakfast in the 80-degree blue green Pacific water on Costa Rica’s Guanacaste peninsula sure beat March in New England.

As we walked seaward, we caught sight of a dark form on the sand moving in the same direction. Curious, we walked to it and saw that it was a newly hatched baby sea turtle.

It had just emerged from its nest buried in the sand where it had been for about 7 weeks until it broke out of its shell. And once it breathed air, it hurried toward the water. Instinct told it to abandon the hot sand for its life in the sea, the attraction as if the tiny turtle was one pole of a large magnet and the sea the other.

Since it was a lone turtle to have hatched that day, predators were not patrolling the beach waiting for a free meal but just in case, we decided that the dismal rate of about one-one hundredth of a percent that survive to adulthood would not affect this one. At least until it reached the sea.

Knowing not to imprint a human hand on it, we did not handle the little one that was about the size of my palm exclusive of fingers. Instead, we positioned ourselves on either side and walked down the beach flanking the turtle as it efficiently scampered, using its flippers as feet.

When it got to the water, it followed the wet sand of a retreating wave until another wave tossed it around in the froth and brought it back close to us. But it only took three or four waves before it got into water deep enough that the wave action did not push it back again. We waved goodbye and wished it luck.

A couple of years later back in Costa Rica, we were out fishing with a charter boat captain we had befriended. We had been fishing with him for several years from his 19-foot-long open boat called a panga.

We met him at the beach where his boat was high and dry. Everything had to be carried from the truck to the boat. Then, with all the gear loaded, he used log rollers to launch it into the water, a laborious endeavor but second nature to him.

The experienced captain knew his business. We caught yellowfin tuna, bonito and iridescently colorful mahi mahi (also known as dorado or dolphin fish) that were cooked for us at local restaurants. Out on the water, the guys bantered in grand style while I just laughed and enjoyed every minute. In short order, we became good friends with him and his wife.

On this day, we were miles from shore, the mountainous land a distant outline. I looked ahead and saw a white long-legged bird standing on the water, which was hundreds of feet deep. As we got closer, we saw that it was a gull standing on the back of a turtle at the surface. I instantly thought of the term “Turtle Island,” the Native American creation story for North America. In the story the turtle represented the land within the giant sea. Suddenly, this scene made perfect sense to me.

Then, I spotted another turtle, but it was swimming in an odd way. As we got closer, it was clear that it was not one, but two turtles. One was clasped tightly to the other. They were mating! Our captain said it was really rare to see them mating and he wondered if the female was getting ready to head to shore to lay her eggs. But he said it was not the normal time of year for that to happen. What a thrill to see this ancient creature in the act of producing the next generation at the surface of the Pacific Ocean, miles from shore, with no other humans to witness the spectacle before us.

A couple of days later, we were heading from Nosara to Ostional a few miles to the north. A new one-car bridge was a big change from driving through the river and as we were about to cross, we saw a vehicle on the other side. We motioned for the driver to come ahead – we were on vacation and in no hurry.

When the beat-up truck reached us, the driver who was grinning said something in rapid-fire Spanish that was obviously exciting to him. I had taken several baby Spanish courses and had my dictionario as my constant companion. I could speak a bit but comprehension was dismal unless the person spoke embarrassingly slowly - mas, mas despacio, por favor.

My husband, who didn’t speak any Spanish, looked at me and said, “The turtles are on the beach at Ostional.” I had gotten one word – tortugas – turtles. “How on earth did you figure that out?” I asked. “I don’t know but that’s what he said. I’m sure of it.” We were heading there anyway so if he was right, we were in for a rare treat.

The stretch of shore between Playa Guinones and Ostional comprises 86 km of land and sea known as the Ostional Wildlife Refuge and is one of the two most important areas in the world for nesting Olive Ridley turtles.

In 1981, the Costa Rican government recognized the importance of this area and enacted regulations on land development. No development can take place closer than 200 meters from the shore meaning that no hotels or houses and their bright lights would line the shore as in other parts of the country.

One of the reasons the turtles are endangered is because of the “light pollution” from development. They seem to get confused by bright lights and cannot find their way, needing the darkness to find the right place to perform their ancient ritual although occasionally but rarely, they come ashore during the day too.

While Nosara is important, the main action takes place in Ostional. For a few months in the rainy season, particularly in September and October, hundreds of thousands of turtles come up the black volcanic sand beach a few days on either side of the new moon to lay their clutch of 80-100 eggs in a spectacle known as an “arribada” which means arrival.

We got to Ostional and heard excited voices all around. Not only was this the middle of the day but it was March, the height of the hot dry season, not the fall rainy one. Yet, a group of about 50 turtles were on the beach at this time of day and year. Very unusual.

Courtesy Mytanfeet.com

We watched one particular female. She was about two and a half feet long and one and a half feet across – small for some sea turtles but big to us. The turtle dragged her 100-pound body up the sloped beach. It weighed so much more in air than in the buoyant seawater.

One plodding flipper after another, she made an unmistakable track. She lumbered higher and higher up the beach, searching for a site that would not get washed away with a moon high tide while the eggs lay buried.

The female found her special spot and began digging with her back flippers curved like a shovel. Time after time, alternating sides, she patiently dug her hole. It was hot. The black sand absorbed even more heat. The turtle struggled. She emitted an audible sound like a sigh. A discharge rolled down her face from her eyes. Was this struggling cold-blooded reptile whose ancestors went back millions of years, actually crying with this effort? It was hard not to think so.

Courtesy Mytanfeet.com

After watching the turtle for what seemed like an hour, she had finally deposited her white, ping-pong-ball sized eggs, filled in the hole carefully covering her precious cargo, turned around and trudged back down the beach, moving slightly faster than when she arrived. And then she disappeared into the sea.

On the way back to Nosara, we marveled at the terrific and serendipitous gift we

had been given. We had witnessed the total life cycle of these ancient creatures. The very rare sighting of turtles mating in the open ocean, wrong time of year and wrong time of day to lay eggs, and the emergence of a new generation.

How unbelievable fortunate we were to have seen it all.

In colonial times and up to the1960s, the berries were dry harvested with wooden scoops. People knelt on the ground pushing the heavy scoop through the low berry bushes, the round pointed-tip tines separating bushes and loosening the ripe berries to fall into the boxy portion of the scoop. It was hard work, and many hands were needed to complete the task during the short harvest season.

The process I stopped to watch was called wet harvesting and occurs when the bog is flooded the night before harvesting. The berries are mechanically loosened from the vines and because of a small air pocket, they float to the surface.

A man was standing on a machine that had a horizontal bar with a set of rotary disks, churning up the water. The rear of the machine had a pump and a pipe attached as the intake water. The man operated the machine in a grid pattern of straight rows. At the end of a row, he jumped off the machine, clad in chest waders, removed a white pole and stuck it back in to mark where he had been, presumably as a guide. As the machine churned the water in front, a machine-wide swath of berries floated to the top of the flooded bog at the rear. On the far side of the bog, berries had been corralled to be transferred to trucks waiting on the shore with other machines. I watched the operation for about 20 minutes, fascinated by the whole operation.

Recently, the colors of autumn had returned, shades of yellow, red and orange mixed with the green of pines. The combination of overlapping mustard and gold, cranberry, burgundy and vermillion, burnt orange, pumpkin and ochre, tawny and umber was a feast for the eyes and for the spirit.

A friend and I took a ride on a crisp Saturday afternoon to a neighboring town known for its cranberry production. Perhaps we could watch some harvesting.

We stopped at a flooded bog dotted with small multi-colored flags. The flags indicated harvest soon but I had no idea what the colors meant. It was only a couple of acres and a row of houses was visible through the trees in the background. At the edge of the bog, we were treated to see a few patches of wild asters.

We passed many bogs, some flooded, some with flags but still dry. A sign said Cape Cod Select, with a road leading inland. We had come across a major operation.

At the top of a knoll, a large warehouse type building was being watched by a rust-colored retriever-sized dog lying in the sun. He watched us but didn’t move. There were a few cars and as we rounded the building, below us was an open freight truck, the size of an 18-wheeler. Cranberries were pouring into the truck by a conveyor belt on a machine on the bog side of the truck. We couldn’t see the mechanics of the machine but we could see the bogs.

While we were watching the loading, the dog came over to the car, not barking but sniffing and finally barking a bit. A boy called to him and he followed the boy down to the loading activity – obviously not a company watch dog.

These bogs were massive, multi-acre manicured rectangles separated by green and brown berms and ditches. Some berms were access roads and the ditches were needed for drainage. They were of nearly equal size that I couldn’t estimate, and extended for as far as we could see. At the far side, the berries were corralled in water, and the color was a paler shade. These berries were wet-harvested like the ones I had seen a couple of years earlier. We drove around the building and down a dirt road and saw that bogs extended far inland on both sides of the road.

Courtesy Cape Cod Select and Edgewood Bogs LLC

On our way back out, a man in a golf-cart sized vehicle came in our direction. We thought we might be stopped but he just waved and we continued to the exit.

Cape Cod Select is a family-owned company. The Rhodes family started the business in the 1940s, operating as Edgewood Bogs Cranberry Growers. Cape Cod Select is a more recent part of the operation, begun in 2009, with a goal of producing premium cranberries year-round. They developed a new product: frozen cranberries. Starting with individual Whole Foods stores, it now is sold nationally. They have over 800 acres and were the first American company to achieve Global G.A.P. certification. Certification requires adherence to a set of standards for agricultural products around the world. Companies are routinely audited to ensure they comply with the standards in order to maintain certification. The Cape Cod Select website states, “Edgewood Bogs and Cape Cod Select consistently receive top scores on all audits and certifications.” The criteria include strict guidelines for traceability, record keeping, production, harvest, environmental issues, and worker health and welfare. Knowing that on top of what we saw, made the detour all the more meaningful.

Our journey continued down a side road called Cranberry Road. How could we not follow that one? After passing a few houses in the first half mile, it was just bogs and woods on both sides of the road for miles. Then we came to a housing village and shortly thereafter, a sign for Ocean Spray.

Ocean Spray is the top cranberry processor in the country. It is owned by a cooperative and sources its berries from over 700 growers in the U.S., Canada and Chile. Wisconsin is the largest producer of cranberries in the U.S. with Massachusetts second largest.

When we got to Ocean Spray, trucks, the same size and type we saw being loaded at Cape Cod Select, were lined up in a parking lot. We thought they were stopped at a gate house but found it was a scale. There was a man outside the building and, still thinking we would be stopped, we asked if it was OK to drive through, that we were just curious. He shrugged and said “Be curious.” Great response that made us laugh.

Around a corner there was an enormous production building. Neat piles of wooden pallets stamped with Ocean Spray on the side and way in the back, other harvesting items were also neatly stacked. A pool surrounded by a fence with a bubbler operating in the center and foamy liquid on the top, was obviously some sort of effluent processor.

We left and continued on this back road. We had no idea where it would take us but figured at some point we would know where we were. Then we came across a sign that said Makepeace Farm. It advertised a café, store and farm tours.

What a find! The café is in a barn and serves sandwiches, soup, salads, desserts and specialty gift items with a cranberry focus. A large blackboard extolled the nutritional and healthful virtues of cranberries. It was delightful, totally unexpected, and located in an out-of-the-way place that most people who went there would know about ahead of time or would arrive thanks to GPS, not find by accident.

Courtesy Makepeace Farm

The lunch was fabulous – simple, tasty, nutritious featuring cranberries in some fashion. Soups and desserts were made on premises, and the staff were super friendly.

We continued in the direction we were heading and eventually crossed a highway and then came to houses, businesses and a crossroad. We had arrived at a place we knew and headed home. It had been an afternoon adventure of beautiful fall colors and numerous surprises.

It’s easy to forget about cranberries until Thanksgiving rolls around and then the turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce comes to mind. But craisins, an Ocean Spray dried alternative to raisins and cranberry juice are in grocery stores year-round. And now, thanks to Cape Cod Select and their frozen cranberries, the delicious little red berries can be used all year long.

But, like most of our food, we rarely think about how it got to our grocery shelves. Our adventure reminded us of what it takes to get from farm to table, and we were grateful for the reminder and the lessons learned. And it brightened our spirits to see the activities in the splendor of nature’s palate of beautiful fall colors.