COURTESY OF THE CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES: Two juvenile moonfish were discovered during a finfish survey in Pleasant Bay. Photo by Owen Nichols.
PROVINCETOWN – An illustrated lecture later this month from the Center for Coastal Studies will explore a phenomenon which brings unlikely visitors to local waters.
“The Gulf Stream Orphan Project” is March 29 at Napi’s Restaurant in Provincetown and will be presented by Michael O’Neill, a Marine Science student at UMass Boston, and Owen Nichols, the Center for Coastal Studies’ Director of Marine Fisheries Research.
Gulf Stream Orphans are larval or juvenile tropical fish that travel with the Gulf Stream current and settle in warm estuaries like Pleasant Bay. The fish presumably die as the waters cool into the winter.
The project is an effort to learn more about this occurrence on a regional scale and attempts to find out when these fish first begin to arrive in Northeast waters and in what numbers.
The information will be compiled into a database that will provide a better understanding of coastal ecology of the Northeast U.S. for regional institutions, researchers, biologists and oceanographers.
The free event is part of the center’s Winter Lecture Series and will begin at 7 p.m.
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