Eastward Bound

Living on the Cape, it is pretty hard to be Eastward bound, 40 miles tops and you would be in Provincetown and end of journey. Unless, of course, you are an Alewife, a stout member of the Herring family. The annual spring migration of these herring from the cold waters of the Atlantic through small streams that lead to the freshwater pond of its birth is a true rite of spring on the Cape.

It’s an anadromous fish, which means it spends most of its life in salt water, but returns to fresh water to spawn. One of those dazzling tricks of nature where no one knows exactly how they manage to find their way from the wide Atlantic to the one tiny stream that will lead to the pond they were born in. The fact that it takes them 3-4 years to mature to spawning age means this encoded info, this smell that smells like home, has to stay with them all that time. It is thought to be an olfactory trick, for every stream, brook, river has its own chemistry. Clearly they have a better memory for such things than I do. No GPS, no AAA maps, yet year after year they find their way.

But it isn’t the spring migration that I mean to write about in December. Rather it is the rather astonishing fact that while walking along the stream that leads from this bog pond, through a salt marsh and out to sea, I saw schools of small pale fish in the shallows. They were definitely heading downstream and there were so many of them that it seemed to me, they could only be herring, but this late in the year? It just shows how many mysteries remain for me. I had always looked for them in the spring and remember seeing schools of fish in the ponds in early fall that I was sure were the herring, but again, December! Late bloomers? Eggs that for some reason didn’t hatch in the usual one week it takes, or is there some other fish I don’t know about that also spawns in the pond and heads back to sea? Sorry that this is one of those essays where I will just share my questions with you without having the answers.

I do know that the female lays about 100,000 eggs, the majority of which will be a tasty part of someone’s food chain. For that matter, at the end of this herring run, in the phragmites that line the marsh, I found an otter hole. As usual, that premier naturalist, my dog, led me to it. A wonderful multi-hole system and a trail littered with otter scat, the silvery shiny scales of fish. What better place to hang out then the exit ramp for herring. Little bite-size, fish nibblets right out the door.

As far as the human food chain, I believe it is only the Wampanoag that are allowed to catch them now, for like so many other species, their numbers have been declining steadily. I have a faint memory of coming to the Cape as a child and catching the herring with our hands and tossing them in buckets. And the pilgrims claimed you could walk on their backs to cross the streams. Not so now. For that matter, when we first came here and found out there were “Herring Wardens” my kids thought that was a riot. Certainly a profession they hadn’t thought of adopting until they arrived. Wearing a “Herring Warden” badge would be the ultimate in macho authority!

Well, it is December, and clearly there are things I should be doing other than blogging. Nine days to my Westward bound journey and so much to do, so many places to see one more time plus Christmas cards to write, presents to buy. However, should I find an answer to my questions about the identity of these herring look-a-likes, you shall be the first to know.