November 11, 2019

​Welcome to winter seining. This year we are expanding our normal seine sampling to include the winter months. Typically, we seine once a week between the months of June and November to try to catch migrating juvenile alewife leaving Wreck Pond for the Atlantic Ocean. However, this year, we will continue to seine once or twice a month through February. The goal behind this additional work is to get a better idea of the winter assemblage of fish found in Wreck Pond. Our first seine event took place yesterday. We caught lots of Atlantic silversides, a handful of very small summer flounder and spotted hake, a larger winter flounder, and one sand eel.  

Ammodytes americanus or sand eel is a small lance shaped fish common in the Western North Atlantic. They primarily feed on plankton. Towards dusk, sand eels will bury themselves in the sand likely as a way to avoid predators such as striped bass and bluefish.