Tarpon on Cape Cod?
When I lived in Woods Hole one of my favorite pastimes was to fish for blues off the National Marine Fisheries pier.
But it would get really interesting in the late summer when bonito that had hitched a ride north in a warm core ring of the Gulf Stream, would dash through the hole, slashing at menhaden, mackerel and squid.
It was also fun to go down to the dock where the wealthy summer people would be landing their bluefin tuna and point out all parasitic worms with the girth of a thumb that the owners would be planning to eat for dinner.
In the Fall I would go down to Nobska Beach to collect the tiny tropical fish that had also drifted north in the warm core rings.
When the waters started to cool, the tropicals would cluster only inches from the shore where the water was just a few degrees warmer.
But my experiences didn’t hold a candle to those of half a dozen cape Cod and Rhode Island fishermen and who hooked onto six-foot long leaping silver tarpon that had also ridden the Gulf Stream north.
It was yet another example that are our oceans are hotter than they have been for the last 125,000 years.
But I’ll bet the owner of that private bluefin boat thinks global warming is a hoax and he can keep it at bay by making the largest political contribution in history to support the incoming administration.