Published in The Fisherman, Long Island, Metro NY edition, August 23, 2007

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Ever since my Dad took me fishing for the first time at the age of 6, I have been hooked on fishing. There was never a bad day of fishing. Fishing to me did not always mean having a rod and reel in hand. When the bite was slow, I would wander off, turning over rocks, scooping up sea weed or setting up a killifish trap just to see what kind of interesting critters I could find. Collecting something new was always extremely exciting. I would go home, and flip through all of my field guides until I identified the new species. Upon identifying the organism, I would spend hours learning all I could about it. This fascination led me to Southampton College where I took a vow of poverty and received a degree in Marine Biology. And now, as a marine biologist at Atlantis Marine World, fish are truly my life.

Long Island is home to an abundance of fish species. Sport fish such as fluke, striped bass, bluefish, and weakfish are most commonly talked about. There are so many other species that are overlooked because they are small, uncommon, do not make good table fare or are just here for a short time. Of these "Other Fishes", there is one group of fishes that gets me excited, the tropicals. Butterfly fish, angelfish, tangs, jacks, and groupers are all common here on Long Island. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, these fishes find their way to our waters every summer.

Spotfin Butterflyfish- Chaetodon ocellatus

The Gulf Stream is the north bound current of the larger North Atlantic Gyre (the clockwise circulation pattern of the North Atlantic Ocean). The Gulf Stream flows north along the east coast of North America. After passing Newfoundland, it crosses the Atlantic and heads towards Europe. This current affects our region in many different ways. For starters, it has a huge impact on climates. Have you ever asked yourself why do we tend to get the nasty rain/sleet/snow mix while our neighbors just to the north and west of us will get snow? The warm water of the Gulf Stream keeps our air temperatures warmer than our neighbors, causing that sloppy precipitation. Similarly, warm water of the Gulf Stream keeps Western Europe considerably warmer than most other regions at that latitude.

Gulf Stream Water Temperature Map

To a fisherman, the Gulf Stream has greater importance than creating those infamous winter nor’easters or bringing warmer weather in Europe. With this current come many exciting fishes. The Gulf Stream is important to the offshore fisherman, as it brings blue water game fish such as sharks, tuna, wahoo, and billfish to our waters. Following the Gulf Stream, these fishes swim here in search of the abundance of food found in our nutrient rich waters. To a fish collector such as myself, the Gulf Stream helps keep money in my wallet by bringing exotic fish to me, instead of having to pay for an expensive trip to the Caribbean to see them.

A Blue Angelfish (Holocanthus isabelita) and a Bi-color Damselfish (Stegastes partitus) at the Ponquogue Bridge, Hampton Bays, NY.

So how do all these exotic fishes get here? Well for some (tuna, sharks, triggerfish, cobia, etc.), they simply swim here. For many others, it is not so simple. When most fish spawn, they release eggs and sperm into the water in the chance that they will combine, creating a fertilized egg. After fertilization, the egg develops into a larva; a developmental stage that usually looks nothing like its parents. This larval stage can last for a month or more until it metamorphoses and settles as a juvenile. During this time, they might have drifted far from where they were originally spawned. This drifting disperses the fish throughout their home range, and in some cases helps to expand their range. Some of these larval fishes get picked up by the Gulf Stream and start drifting north. As they drift north, they are pushed inshore by eddies that break off from the Gulf Stream. As these eddies enter our inshore waters, the larval fish starts its metamorphosis and settles on our south shore jetties, and in the grass beds of the south shore bays.

I prefer to break the tropical fishes into two groups. The first group of fishes, the transients, leaves once the water temperature drops. This group can be further broken into two sub groups; ones that arrive as adults and ones that arrive as juveniles. Some of the adult tropicals would be grey triggerfish, cobia, striped burrfish, sting rays, and tarpon. These fishes, with assistance from the Gulf Stream, swim here and have the ability to swim south when the water gets too cold. The fishes that arrive as juveniles would be the jacks (crevalle, permit, pompano, etc...). These fish spend their whole life swimming great distances, and as winter approaches, will leave our bays in search of warmer water. Recent studies have shown that Long Island may be an important nursery for juvenile species of jacks just as it is for bluefish.

The second group of fishes, the strays, are ones that perish when winter arrives. These are the fishes that drift here as juveniles, and other than migrating to and from deeper water, they do not migrate far once they settle on a particular part of bottom. This would be the reef species; butterflies, groupers, angelfish, filefish, etc. As winter approaches and water temperatures drop, these little fish will die. This is a natural process that has been going on since the Gulf Stream started flowing north. I have collected tropical fish up to mid November, but usually Halloween is the latest you will find any.

Starting in late June, you will begin to see the first juvenile fishes. Gag, scamp and snowy groupers, planehead file fish, and dwarf goatfish usually make up the first wave of tropicals. These fishes are small when they first arrive (half an inch or less). By October, these same groupers can reach five inches in length.

As the summer marches on, more and more species start showing up. Spotfin butterfly fish usually arrive next and are probably one of the most abundant tropicals in our waters. There have been days when I have collected several hundred with just a few pulls of a seine net. Spotfins are one of four different butterfly species we find on Long Island. We also see four-eye, banded, and reef butterfly fish. Some other common tropicals are crevalle jack, permit, pompano, lookdowns, gray snapper, striped burrfish, band tail puffer, short big eyes, squirrel fish, and bi-color damsels.

Bandtail Puffer Fish- (Sphoeroides spengleri)

There are also several species of tropicals that are considered "gems" by fish collectors on Long Island. One such fish is the blue angelfish. Their blue color is so intense that they appear to glow in contrast to the dark environment of a jetty. Last summer, while SCUBA diving, I spent over half an hour trying to catch a single, one inch angelfish. I was armed only with a ten inch net and a small plastic container to place the fish in, while the angelfish had the entire jetty wall to hide in. Patience and experience paid off, as I succeeded in catching the angelfish.

A Blue Angelfish (Holocanthus isabelita)

One of the newest "gems" is a fish that should not even be in the Atlantic Ocean. About five years ago, fellow fish collector Todd Gardner, had collected something he had never collected here before, a lionfish. Lionfish are native to the Indo-Pacific, so finding one at Fire Island Inlet was amazing. After doing some research he came to find that some adult lionfish have been observed off of Florida and the Carolinas. This lionfish he caught was the first reported juvenile in the Atlantic Ocean. Since that catch, we have been finding more and more of them every year. During the summer of 2005, after a serious amount of collecting, we only came up with a dozen lionfish. Last year, I collected eight on the first dive of the season, and we had well over 200 brought to us from other collectors.

The introduction of lionfish to the Atlantic is going to have unknown consequences. They are voracious feeders, eating anything that they can fit into their mouth. Additionally, they are venomous. A hit from their dorsal spines will inflict a very painful sting. At Atlantis, we are actively involved with NOAA and local universities studying the spread of this invasive species.

It is very easy to overlook these other fishes during the excitement of chasing blitzes of bass and blues, or while bouncing sinkers looking for some flounder for the dinner table. Our waters are teeming with life, from the summer transients and stray tropicals, to the many other fishes and invertebrates that I have not mentioned that live here year round. All these organisms are important to the health and future of our marine ecosystem. Next time the bite is slow, explore your favorite pier, jetty or stretch of beach, who knows what you might find.