. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. One Fish's Adventure By Edgerton Winter's approach- ing. I can feel the water cooling around me. Now and then, I have an urge to swim quickly toward the rising sun. There's a big ocean out there, they say. I'm a menhaden. One of the most common fish in the sound. Coastal folks spend a lot of time trying to catch me and my family We're small, but tasty and abun- dant, they say. They think they know about me and my kind. But few people are aware of the magnificent journey I've taken dur- ing the first f
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. One Fish's Adventure By Edgerton Winter's approach- ing. I can feel the water cooling around me. Now and then, I have an urge to swim quickly toward the rising sun. There's a big ocean out there, they say. I'm a menhaden. One of the most common fish in the sound. Coastal folks spend a lot of time trying to catch me and my family We're small, but tasty and abun- dant, they say. They think they know about me and my kind. But few people are aware of the magnificent journey I've taken dur- ing the first few months of my life. I don't remember my earlier days. In my estuarine school, our teacher explained some things. "Your life did not begin here," the teacher said. "You were born in the warm and salty waters of the great Gulf Stream. As you traveled north you grew slowly. When you reached the coast of North Carolina, you were thrust toward the beach with great fury. Some days you traveled three or four miles.'' "Wow," I thought. "That's not bad for a fish only a quarter of an inch long!" The teacher explained that it took us about 60 days to reach the beach. "The water is shallow at the barrier islands," she said. "Cur- rents running along the shore in a southward motion created a con- veyor belt of water, carrying you and millions of your kin toward the inlets called Oregon, Ocracoke, and Hatteras. "You are the ones who squeezed through the inlets and into the sound. Millions of your relatives didn't make it. They were carried farther south by the conveyor belt. But you became an involuntary participant in a unique process. As cold winter winds blew across the sounds toward the Outer Banks, the surface waters tilted eastward, stopping at the western shores of the barrier islands. It was much like tilting a bowl of water to one side.'' I learned we were gradually car- ried westward as gravity pulled the sound's bottom wate
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
