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CapeLinks Cape Cod: Nature
Cape Cod wildlife and nature
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articles & blogs: nature
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2009 Great White Shark Season Wrap Up
Two kayakers reported the first great white attack on a seal August 19, 2009. Cape Codders Bruce Bean and… -
Chatham Fisherman Charged with Humpback Whale Crime
A local Chatham fisherman is charged with with violating the Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection acts for freeing a whale from his fishing gear off Chatham last July. Some readers of this… -
How many pounds of fish does a seal eat per day?
It is widely known that seals eat between 6%-8% of their body weight in fish per day. Which doesn’t seem like all that much. Now let’s scale it a bit. How much fish will 10,000 seals eat… -
How can you tell how old a codfish is?
To age a codfish you need to remove the fish’s otolith. An otolith is a bone located just behind the ear… -
Beach Life
The tidewrack, tideline or line of debris left by the high tide contains many wonders of the sea. -
Declining Herring Stocks and Midwater Trawling
Over the last two decades local herring stocks have been on the decline. Both river herring and ocean herring (or sea herring)… -
Wellfleet’s Kettle Ponds
Notes on the National Seashore’s Kettle Ponds in Wellfleet -
Cape Cod Scenic Tours
Welcome to Cape Cod Scenic Tours! Cape Cod Scenic Tours, based in the mid Cape, specializing in sightseeing tours throughout Cape Cod. Our sightseeing tours are fun filled and leave each visitor… -
Run Herring! Run!
The Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Commission approved a three-year ban in all state waters on harvest, possession and sale of river herring. The November 2006 decision came in response to recent drastic… -
Too Many Seals, Not Enough Sharks
The growing seal population on the Cape will be an ever increasing problem into the future. As a commercial… -
Blackfish Invasions
Blackfish up to twenty feet long frequently ground themselves on Cape Cod beaches. There are many theories as to why they beach themselves in this manner. -
Common Large Whales of New England
Whale watching is a very popular activity on Cape Cod. Whale watch excursions run regularly from Barnstable Harbor, Provincetown and Plymouth. Here is a list of the large whales most often seen in Cape… -
Floral Splendor
Have you ever noticed that flowers look gayer on the Cape than they do on the mainland? They seem to possess a sparkle and color more vivid than flowers unfortunate enough to grow elsewhere. -
Mayflowers
The most celebrated flower of Cape Cod and Plymouth is the little mayflower. -
The Forest Primeval
When the explorer Champlain, and later John Smith, explored the coast of Cape Cod, and when Captain Myles Standish first landed at Provincetown in November of the year 1620, much of the land was covered… -
Real Bores!
This is a little dissertation on one of Cape Cod’s clams worst foes the snail, more particularly the kind called the boring snail or whelk.… -
Sperm Whales
Back in the days of whaling, the sperm whale yielded the finest and most valuable oil. The sperm whale, a toothed whale, has teeth, but only in the lower jaw. -
Not A Clam At All
Everyone who has strolled on a Cape Cod beach for any distance has seen the long, black shells which so-called razor clams once occupied. The shells are usually paired, so that they can be closed together,… -
No Wonder the Sea is Salty!
In just one gallon of seawater there is a quarter pound of total salts in solution. A gallon of seawater, by the way, tips the scales at about eight and a quarter pounds. -
Cape Cod’s Kettle Holes
Behind from the beaches and salt marshes which we find on the Bay side of Cape Cod, there is a jumble of low, rounded hillocks which rise gently from the almost level moorlands. -
Volcanoes in Massachusetts?
Whoever heard of a red-hot volcano in Massachusetts? You would have hard work to find one; in fact, you could not find one today. Yet, we are told by geologists that once upon a time active volcanoes… -
Barnacle Bill The Sailor
The hero of the popular song by that title is entirely a myth, but barnacles are no myth. Anyone who has ever tried to scrape them from the bottom of a boat knows they are a very stubborn fact. -
Curious Facts About the Tides
Visitor: “I have always been told that the tides come an hour later each day, but from my observation it would appear that this is not always so. Can you tell me about this? Also, I am… -
Forest Buried Under Cape End
According to Gustavus Swift Paine, genealogist and Cape historian, the following may be read in a rare old volume, The American Geography, by Jedediah Morse, published in London in 1794. -
Beach Grass
Many types of beach grass and dune plants are found along the sandy shores of Cape Cod. Common beach grass helps protect the sandy hills or dunes against erosion. Some “dune grass” is planted… -
A Black Eye for Blackbirds
Since the men of the Cape who did not follow the sea did farm the land, it was important to them that the corn they planted should have a chance to grow and not be eaten and destroyed by birds. -
Where Orchards Once Bloomed
The Cape was at one time full of orchards of almost every description which bore luscious and beautiful fruits. Most of these old orchards are dying now, and few remain to be seen. -
Fall Butterflies
The great southward migration of the monarch butterfly along the dunes in September and October is the butterfly event of the year on Cape Cod. -
Barnstable Bay Rises 29 Feet
The sea level in Barnstable Bay during the past five thousand years has experienced a 29-foot rise. The record is written plainly for the eyes of scientists who delve into such subjects. -
First Massachusetts Resident
Not the Pilgrims, not the Vikings,… -
Who? Who? Hoo!
Every once in a while these parts are visited by a rarely seen bird—the white Arctic owl. His coming is regarded, by those who know the signs, as a sure token of a hard, cold winter. -
The Flounders
Talk about “wierd fish”. One of the queerest is the flounder! It is flat, literally as flat as a pancake. It’s delicious eating, too. And it is marked so dark on its upper side and… -
Moon Over Cape Cod
Early Cape Codders, in fact, Cape Codders up to not so very long ago, like other New Englanders, believed that the moon had a profound influence over many departments of the people’s lives. -
Is it a Fortune?
We have heard of small fortunes “picked up” from the sea or at the seashore when some lucky person discovered ambergris there. What is ambergris? and how could you be sure you had made a… -
Moonberries and Crowberries
The Cape’s lowly cranberry, bright, gayly red, pleasantly tart to the taste, with a delightful tang, is a berry of fascinating interest to those who make a study of it and its varieties, names,… -
Fish Out Of Water
Fishermen of Cape Cod occasionally bring in to port more than the fish in their holds. In the fall of 1963, the dragger Frances Elizabeth, of Provincetown, reached port with a deer she had “caught”… -
Trees On the Cape
The commonest tree on Cape Cod is the common pitch pine, or scrub pine. Next in frequency are the scrub oak and the juniper, or red cedar, as it is locally called. All these trees are native to the… -
Them Ain’t Clams
“Them ain’t clams, them’s quahaugs,” is the classic Cape Cod remark to visitors who admire the shellfish which to the south of us is usually called the hard-shelled clam. -
The Tides
To people living along the seacoast the phenomenon of the rise and fall of the tides is as familiar as breathing. But to visitors from inland regions, who have never before seen the ocean, it is a strange… -
Nauset’s Big Boulder
As you drive out to Nauset Light, keep an eye open for Nauset’s Big Boulder. You will spy it roosting in a grove of trees to your right. Wonder how it got there? -
Seaweed for Dinner?
Among the different varieties of apparently useless seaweed tossing idly in the waves or strewn for long distances along the highwater mark on the beach, one may discern the kind known as “Irish… -
Smiling Cape Cod!
Those sparkling Irish eyes that are smiling in the well-known song are matched by the bright smiling aspect of Cape Cod as it lies beneath a summer sky whose sun makes the waters dance for joy. Again,… -
Cape Cod’s Black Magic
If you are standing one evening on a Harwich shore, and, looking off towards Monomoy, suddenly see the shrubs elongate themselves into trees, and sand dunes on the far eastern horizon seem to be mysteriously… -
Cape Cod Going North?
The following is a report from 1955 regarding the warming of local ocean waters and it’s effect on Cape codfish stocks: -
When A Lobster Does The Split
The way a lobster fights to get out of its shell in June and August never fails to arouse wonder. By thrashing about and going into contortions of a lobster type, the creature splits its old shell all… -
Shallows and Shoals
As you see the tides receding at Cape Cod and behold the land beneath them emerging, as it were, you will know that Cape Cod waters are “shallow waters. They are far from deep. -
Beachcombers & Beachcombing
It’s always lots of pleasure to stroll the beach, keeping an eye to seaward for yachts, steamers, fishing… -
Wood, Wood, Everywhere
The early settlers of Cape Cod had to face the fact that they must wrest their living and their shelter from the land itself. From the trees which virtually surrounded them, they were soon hewing, hacking,… -
Save the Flowers!
In their desire to pick some of the lovely wild flowers that grow in Cape Cod fields and glens, visitors sometimes pull up the entire plant, roots and all. Few wild flowers can survive such a shock.… -
Holly Trees
Do you know that Cape Cod has holly trees? The following comment from a Cape visitor is of interest in this respect:
