Strange Fish
THE
LAST TIME Captain Richard Rutland attempted to
fish for snook, he had to travel nearly 11 hours
from Mobile, Alabama, to the tropical waters of
Everglades National Park, in south Florida. That
was one of the nearest places he could hope to
find such a fish, known for fighting hard on the
hook. Lately, though, it’s looking like Rutland
can stay closer to home: snook and other
warm-water fish are finding their way north, and
showing up on social media along the way.
“We
caught a PERMIT while fishing for sheepshead
with nightcrawlers,” a Mississippi angler
recently posted on Facebook. “We thought I had
caught a state record, not because it was huge
but because this fish is so rare for MS waters.”
“To
say I was SHOCKED today would be an
understatement,” another fisherman recently
posted. “Not only did we catch double digit
pompano numbers but we managed to land this
Alabama bonefish!”
People
are swapping stories and sharing photos of new
fish, sometimes asking for help identifying fish
they’ve never seen before. And this has
researchers intrigued.
Tropical
fish like snook, bonefish, and permit have been
showing up more often in states like Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama, shattering previous
size records and sometimes establishing
completely new ones…
The
recent arrival of new species, due to the
“tropicalization” of the waters, has researchers
looking into what impact they will have on
native plants and animals.
Journalist Jason
Ruffin writes about how
“tropicalization” is upending
Gulf Coast ecosystems that millions of people
rely on.
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