Blog #4: Lovells Island
We began our adventure to Lovells Island at 8:35am at
Courthouse Dock. We were aboard The Belle. It was low tide, and the water
appeared to be clearer than the past few days we had been at the harbor.
However, this observation did not necessarily mean the water was cleaner or
clearer. The sky was more blue today than days past, meaning it was reflecting
a blue color, instead of grey making it appear clearer.
On the way to Lovells, we stopped to fish at a few different
locations. Lucky for us, we made a few nice catches! We got a 9” and 15” black
sea bass, a bregal, a mackerel and a striped sea bass. The black sea bass have
increased in numbers in the harbor over the past three years. This could be
attributed to the rising sea temperatures. Black sea bass were found mostly in
warmer waters, making their habitat farther south than Boston. However, they
have been swimming into the harbor, as the harbor becomes more habitable. Black
sea bass are born female. Then, as they mature, they change into males. This
means there is never a lack of matable partners. We noticed on one of the sea
bass we caught that this fish had a large bump on top of his head. This bump
denotes the fish is maturing, and changing into a male. The bregal was a
pearly, light blue color. Also known as a sea perch, this fish was one of our
smaller catches. The mackerel I caught was white on the bottomw, and a silver
grey on top. It was quite a thin fish about 3” wide, and 6-9” long. Most of the
fish we caught were swimming around 20 feet down. When we were between Long and
Spectacle Island, we used the mackerel as bait to hopefully catch the striped
bass. We lucked out, catching a 30” fish. It was covered in sea lice, small
bugs that feed cling to the fish to eat. This indicates this striper was coming
from the ocean, into the harbor from the ocean.
When we got to Lovells island, we began looking at the island
habitat. As we got to the beach we would be observing and researching, we began
to look at the types of creatures that inhabited the island. We found what
turned out to be land snails on the beach, which was not what we expected to
see. Land snails on an island, near the water seemed strange. We observed the
same blue mussels we had seen in the main harbor. I spotted a cluster of them all lodged between to large rocks, getting splashed with water as the waves moved. Unlike the main harbor we had been looking in, we did not find any tunicates on Lovells island. There were periwinkle shells on the beach as well. These snails were not living in the shells, yet we found a cluster of about 5-6 of them all on the same rusted metal on the beach. We found small crabs, hermit crabs as well as the invasive green asian crab all living in the tide pools.
On the way home from Lovells, we gutted the striper. We had already cut its throat when we caught it, so we started by cutting along the ribs to remove the "guts" or the intestines and the egg sacks (this was a female fish). We then removed the filets that we would later take home and eat. We cut the remaining flesh off and used it to make ceviche. I liked touching and looking at the other organs. The heart was very small, probably the size of a large walnut. The gills were bright red like the heart, while the rest of the organs were a pale skin tone. To cook my piece of this fish, I pan fried it in oil, then added Penzeys salt with herbs, giving it a really nice flavor.
Looking at Lovells was very similar to the Barking Crab docks, however it appeared to have fewer species present. Perhaps at the Barking Crab, there are more floating protrusions such as the docks etc for things to cling and grow on. At Lovells, the tide is felt quite drastically, and we watched it rise just standing in the tide pools.
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