The Turtle Journal Team searched Chipman’s Cove in Wellfleet Harbor on Outer Cape Cod this morning for a reported ocean sunfish. We received a call on our 24/7 hotline (508-274-5108) Monday from a part-time resident who had observed a large, strange fish that had washed ashore with the Hunter Moon tide on Saturday. The observer said that he identified the critter as an ocean sunfish based on the photographic posting in the Turtle Journal. Today, November 4th, marked the first time we had an opportunity to visit the site to confirm the identification and to see if this Mola mola had moved with the tides. To quote Bob Prescott of Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, “Even though it’s dead, it keeps moving around.”
6’1″Â from Tip of Dorsal Fin to Tip of Anal Fin
Ocean sunfish represent the most massive bony fish in the world. For more detailed information, you may wish to read Exotic Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) published on Turtle Journal last year at this time. The specimen we found at the leading edge of today’s incoming flood tide measured more than a foot smaller in length and width than the several 7 footers we discovered last November. Stretching the tape for a straight-line measurement from the tip of the dorsal fin to the tip of the anal fin, we recorded a width (or height) of 6 feet 1 inch.
5’10.5″ from Snout to Clavus (Caudal Fin)
Measuring from tip of the snout to the trailing edge of the clavus or caudal fin, we got a length of 5 feet 10.5 inches.
Pectoral Fin, Gill Slits, Sunken Eye and Mouth with Fused Teeth
From the state of the carcass, this ocean sunfish has been floating around the harbor for some time in water too warm to preserve it from rapid decomposition.
Ocean Sunfish off Lieutenant Island in Early October
If you follow the Turtle Journal Team adventures on Twitter (http://twitter.com/turtlejournal), you would have read of our discovery of an earlier ocean sunfish off Lieutenant Island on October 7th. We posted a tweet and a cellphone picture (see above) of a badly decomposed Mola mola carcass off Plover Point (northwest corner of the island).Â
Turtle Journal tweets live events from the field on Twitter to keep you aware of what’s happening on Cape Cod while it’s still happening. You may wish to tune in to our tweets, especially during the sea turtle stranding season, which should begin with a fury during the next storm wave that strikes the Outer Cape.  Twitter affords you the chance to adventure out in the wild with us during the rawest, most dangerous conditions while still in the comfort and relative safety of your computer screen.
Today’s Tweet of Ocean Sunfish from the Field
The Turtle Journal Team tweets (http://twitter.com/turtlejournal) live reports and quick snapshots from the field. Turtle Journal posts (www.turtlejournal.com) detailed stories, high quality photographs and videos of the events. Two ways you can join the Turtle Journal Team and our adventures. The third and most important way you can participate is to call us through the hotline (508-274-5108) with sighting reports and rescue opportunities.  Only with a large cadre of partners with eyes and ears on nature from the SouthCoast to the tip of Cape Cod can we document what’s happening and continue to “save the world, one species at a time.”
Each fall in late September and early October, large numbers of menhaden mass in Sippican Harbor to avoid depredation by fierce and aggressive blue fish. Also know as pogies, bunker and alewifes, menhaden are not used directly for human consumption, yet they form a key element in the oceanic ecosystem as a critical link between plankton and upper level predators.Â
Menhaden Infested with Parasitic Copepods
By this time of the year, many menhaden that enter coastal estuaries are beset with parasitic copepods, as well as dotted with injuries incurred in narrow escapes from blue fish attacks or foul hooking.
Menhaden Escape Blue Fish and Fall Prey to Harvesting
Menhaden form into large balls as the most effective strategy to survive violent attacks by aggressive blue fish. Unfortunately, this strategy creates a hugh vulnerability to harvesting by commercial fishermen.
Oyster Reef off Lieutenant Island Survives Long, Harsh Winter
Turtle Journal returned to the oyster reef restoration project off Lieutenant Island in Wellfleet Bay a few days before the Vernal Equinox. This project is spearheaded by Mass Audubon‘s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary under the leadership of its director, Bob Prescott, in collaboration with federal, state and town partners. While oyster reefs formed a key element of Wellfleet’s historic natural coastal ecosystem as documented by early European explorers, this critical habitat had been eliminated from Wellfleet Bay in modern times. Experimenting with methods to recreate oyster reefs within the Outer Cape ecosystem will offer coastal communities options to restore a key underpinning to their traditional harbor and estuarine ecologies.
Our Turtle Journal assessment: the rudimentary reef structure emplaced  last August survived an extremely challenging winter quite well.
Last September Turtle Journal cameras probed underwater to capture the experimental reef after its first couple of months. These images provide a good baseline against which to judge its current condition.
“Why oyster restoration? It’s not just because they taste great and are increasingly rare in the wild.
Oyster reefs–that’s what a mass of oysters growing together is called. It is a huge complex structure that is home to many, many species of marine invertebrates and fish, both adults as a feeding area and juveniles to hide in. That habitat is almost completely gone from Wellfleet Harbor.
The ecological services that a reef provides are missing from the harbor ecosystem. Oysters help keep the water clean by pumping 60 gallons of water over their gills every day. Also, they lock up nitrates that are overwhelming the coastal system’s ability to absorb.
We talk about conservation and restoration, right down to the waters edge, but what about all those habitats that we have lost because we overfished them? When an oyster reef is overfished, the shell, the structure itself ceases to exist. No more habitat.
For me, it is about protecting all the habitats that make up this sanctuary and restoring those that are missing or in decline. The oyster reef is one example of a key coastal habitat that needs our help.
In August we began the construction of the new reef near Lieutenant Island in Wellfleet Bay.”
The winter of 2008/2009 proved quite long and harsh for the Great White North. Record snow pelted Cape Cod and ice floes clogged Wellfleet Bay, completely enveloping the new oyster reef. As brief thaws set in, massive ice sheets weighing in the tons were dragged across the reef like ploughs. Bright yellow marker buoys from last summer were torn from their moorings, and we feared that the reef itself might have been ripped apart.
Ice Covered Oyster Reef in February
(Courtesy of Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary)
Bob Prescott and his team documented ice cover over the oyster reef in early February. If you look closely at the top left of the ice pack, you may spot a juvenile seal basking in the winter sun (see close-up below).
Close-Up of Seal on Ice Pack off Lieutenant Island
(Courtesy of Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary)
Back to the Present
On Saint Patrick’s Day, the Turtle Journal team waded out to the oyster reef at low tide. As seen in the image at the top of this post, the reef structure survived the long, harsh winter quite well. When Don reached the reef, he frightened away a chubby seagull that had been plucking young, juicy shellfish from the substrate and slurping down their contents.Â
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Young Oysters Survive Harsh Winter on Oyster Reef
The surf clam substrate still holds a nice set of spat and young oysters. Bob’s crack team of oyster researchers will visit the reef shortly to conduct a scientific assessment of the density of shellfish to compare against the data they documented in the fall. They will also begin installing various additional substrates to determine the best structure on which oysters might best accumulate into a viable, self-sustaining reef within the harsh conditions of the Outer Cape.
The water is still pretty cold in the inter-tidal zone off Lieutenant Island. So, life is returning slowly as the sun climbs higher into the sky each day. Periwinkles and mud snails are moving about now, and pesky, invasive Asian shores crabs have been active all winter under rock fields in front of the western seawall. But we were lucky this day to discover a lonely hermit crab strolling along the edge of the reef as an early sign of spring. Only yesterday, March 24th, snow flurries driven by a fierce northeast gale assaulted the Outer Cape. In the Great White North, spring comes slow and hard, and must fight its way onto the calendar.
Lightning Whelk (Busycon perversum)Â from Vanderbilt Beach
Here comes a southern sinister snail to greet the New Year. Large local whelks, channeled and knobbed, found in the Great White North of Cape Cod are considered right-handed; that is, when the whelk is held with the spire up and the siphonal canal down, the shell exhibits a dextral aperture. For more information about these local northern whelks, see The Large and the Small of It (Whelks).  From Vanderbilt Beach in North Naples, Florida comes a more sinister snail. The lightning whelk, when held in the same orientation as described above, is considered left-handed with a sinistral opening. It surely earns its scientific name “perversum.”
Lightning Whelk (left) and Channeled Whelk (right)
The lightning whelk is a predatory snail that can be found as far north as New Jersey to Florida and the Gulf states in the south. They prefer sandy and muddy bottoms of shallow embayments, but choose deeper waters than knobbed whelks. Lightning whelks are large predators who’s principal prey include bivalves.
Channeled Whelk (left) and Lightning Whelk (right)
Another difference between lightning and channeled & knobbed whelks is that lightning whelks have lower or flatter spires. They are all edible species and have been historically consumed by humans.Â
The weather has been “overcast November” heading into “icy December” in the Great White North. While days have been in the low 40s, nights in the mid 20s, winds have been too feeble and too southerly to bring any cold-stunned turtles onto the beach. Those animals that still float about in hypothermic stupor, tossed this way and that by wind and tide, will have to wait until the next strong storm system hits the Cape before they come ashore for rescue. In the mean time, we patrol beaches for the odd turtle that might have stumbled onto shore, and we sweep the wrack line for interesting discoveries. So, forgive us as we take a brief trip backwards in the Turtle Journal “Time Machine” to the warmth of summer, prompted by whelk egg casings we have found recently in Wellfleet Bay.
We ran across a mature knobbed whelk (Busycon carica) while kayaking in Sippican Harbor for terrapins during the summer. This animal had hunted down a large quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) and held it firmly in the grasp of its powerful foot. The whelk was fully engaged in splitting open the bivalve for a delicious dinner. As we examined and documented this snail, it soon became disturbed by our intrusion and dropped its prey to reveal its complete visceral anatomy.
Channeled Whelk (Busycotupus canaliculatus)
The Turtle Journal team has encountered two large whelk species around Cape Cod: knobbed whelks (Busycon carica) and channeled whelks (Busycotupus canaliculatus).  These large (5 to 12 inches) predatory sea snails are considered “right-handed” because when held with the spire up and siphonal canal down, the aperture is on the right (dextral) side. [NOTE: The lightning whelk (Busycon perversum,found in the south and the Gulf of Mexico) as its name implies is sinistral with the aperture on the left side.] Knobbed whelks have tubercles or spines along the shoulder. Channeled whelks are slightly smaller than knobbed whelks and have smooth shells with deep square channels that are continuous on all whorls.
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Knobbed Whelk (Busycon carica)
The apperture contains the whelk’s viserca covered by an operculum (horny door) that protects these snails from predators and desiccation. Major identifiable body parts include the foot (closest to the operculum), two chemosensory tentacles, two light sensitive eyes behind the tentacles, a proboscis between the tentacles with a mouth at the end, and a siphon.
Knobbed Whelk Re-Engages with Quahog Prey
Whelks reside in intertidal and subtidal zones along sandy and muddy bottoms. Clam and oyster reefs can be important habitats as these are prey for whelks. These snails migrate from shallow waters in the spring and summer to deeper waters in the winter. They will bury into the sand for protection during storms. A whelk will wedge the edge of its shell between the two shells of a bivalve. Then, when the two shells are forced ajar, the whelk inserts its proboscis and radulla (rasping tongue) into the soft body of the bivalve.
Live Horseshoe Crabs (Left) to Bait Whelk Traps (Right) in Buzzards Bay
The most serious predators are humans who harvest whelks as a commercial fishery even here in Massachusetts. Beyond removing these graceful, giant gastropods from the seascape, the second tragedy of the whelk fishery is the bait of choice that is used to attract whelks into traps: chopped and quartered horseshoe crabs, live or frozen. [Note: We will be posting an article on the whelk fishery after the sea turtle rescue season.] Europeans are heavy consumers of whelk, which is sometimes sold as “conch” and is also marketed as scungilli for Italians.
Chiton
And now for something really different, as Monty Python might say. The critter Don mentioned in the video clip that the Turtle Journal team had encountered in great numbers on the Reefs beach in Southampton, Bermuda is the chiton. The photograph above shows the chiton we found on the knobbed whelk with Sue’s fingernail for size comparison. According to Wikipedia, chitons are primitive marine mollusks with somewhere between 900 and 1000 existing species and are sometimes called sea cradles or coat-of-mail shells.  The chiton shell consists of eight separate imbricated (overlapping) plates.
Channeled Whelk Casings: Some Opened, Some Plugged
Whelk mating occurs in spring and fall. They are thought to be protandric hermaphrodites, which means that they function first as males when young and smaller, and then whelks change to females as they grow larger and age. So, a fishery that targets larger animals, whether through regulation or fancy, will preferentially eliminate productive females from the ecosystem.Â
Females produce egg capsules or casings attached to a “string.” A string might hold 100 to 120 capsules, with each case containing as many as 35 eggs. One end of the string is secured to the bottom of the bay and eggs develop into very tiny whelks within the casings. After hatching, small juvenile snails emerge through a predesigned exit hole (see photograph above). Most egg casings that wash up on the beach, dredged from the bay floor by nature or man, are empty because the tiny juvenile snails have successfully emerged.
The Peterson Field Guide for Atlantic Seashore offers an excellent diagram of the difference between channeled and knobbed whelk casings. Within our area of the coast, the overwhelming number of casings we find are channeled whelks … such as the one that came from Burton Baker Beach which we will examine in detail below.Â
Most casings that we find on Cape beaches have already hatched; many of the capsules have opened and presumably the tiny whelks that had developed from the eggs inside the casings have already emerged. The chain we found at Burton Baker Beach was different. It contained mostly plugged cases and we selected one of these plugged casings that still felt full of fluid for closer examination. With a small scissors we snipped the edge along the plugged emergence hole, revealing tiny developing whelk shells inside.
Tiny Baby Channeled Whelks
Little whelks were still suspended in gooey fluid and seemed to be in the process of developing their exterior shells. Since most of the casings in this string were still plugged and the whelks had not yet begun to emerge, we assessed that the tiny whelks had not yet developed sufficently to survive independently.
Channeled Whelk Babies under Microscope
Under a microscope at low magnification, you can detect individual shell development. The one furthest left clearly shows the developing siphon canal at the top.
Baby Channeled Whelk for Size Comparison
The casing pictured above came from a channeled whelk egg chain that the Turtle Journal team collected at Mayo Beach in Wellfleet Bay about four weeks ago. While still suspended in mucus-like fluid, the tiny whelks were further along in their development with more mature shell formation. All other casings in this string were empty and presumably tiny whelks had already emerged. We include this photograph to give you a better sense of the size of the babies as they begin to emerge as viewed between Don’s index finger (top) and thumb, and to contrast these baby whelks on the cusp of emergence with the ones from Burton Baker Beach that were still developing.
