Marine Life
Provincetown Harbor supports a wide variety of marine life from algae, seagrasses and plankton through bryozoa, hydroids, echinoderms, crustaceans, mollusks, fish, birds, marine mammals, and other animals.
The harbor is an amazingly diverse and productive habitat. The following tables list in no particular order 94 examples of marine life that are regularly observed within the harbor. A few landbirds are included that are common around MacMillan Pier, on the beaches, and on the breakwater.
| Seaweeds |
|---|
| Ulva (sea lettuce) |
| Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) |
| Pylaiella (mung) |
| bladder wrack |
| knotted wrack |
| codium fragile (dead man's fingers) |
| Crustaceans, chelicerates, molluscs | Other invertebrates |
|---|---|
| American lobster | orange-footed sea cucumber |
| rock crab | Forbes' sea star |
| jonah crab | purple sea urchin |
| portly spider crab | ctenophore (comb jelly) |
| calico crab (lady crab) | moon jelly |
| green crab | various sea sponges |
| Japanese shore crab | clam worm |
| long-clawed hermit crab | northern red anemone |
| flat-clawed hermit crab | stalked sea squirt |
| copepod | sea grape |
| gammarid amphipod (sideswimmer) | Didemnum sp. |
| isopod | chain tunicates |
| barnacle | golden star tunicates |
| skeleton shrimp | lacy crusted bryozoa |
| horseshoe crab - chelicerate | Hydroides tubeworm |
| Longfin Inshore Squid | brittle-star |
| common slipper shell | salp |
| quahog (hard clam) | spiral tufted bryozoa |
| soft-shell clam (steamer) | snail fur |
| Atlantic bay scallop | Tubularian hydroids |
| Eastern oyster (American oyster) | sinistral spiral tubeworm (S. borealis) |
| common periwinkle | featherduster worm |
| northern moon snail | ice cream cone worm |
| oyster drill | |
| Eastern mudsnail | |
| Blue mussel |
| Fish | Birds | Marine mammals |
|---|---|---|
| flounder (fluke) | herring gull | Atlantic white-sided dolphin |
| striped bass | great black-backed gull | harbor porpoise |
| bluefish | double-crested cormorant | harbor seal |
| ocean sunfish | great cormorant | grey seal |
| spiny dogfish | common eider | baleen whales |
| tautog | rock pigeon | |
| cunner (bergall) | house sparrow | |
| pipefish | black-crowned night-heron | |
| lumpfish (lumpsucker) | great blue heron | |
| American eel | green heron | |
| cusk eel | ruddy turnstone | |
| Atlantic herring | northern gannet | |
| three-spined stickleback | Wilson's storm-petrel | |
| black sea bass | laughing gull | |
| little skate | ring-billed gull | |
| basking shark | common tern | |
| Atlantic mackerel | least tern | |
| sculpin | American crow | |
| sand lance | sanderling | |
| scup (porgy) | great shearwater | |
| bluefin tuna | ||
| lingcod |
In 2002, Provincetown Harbor Beach was selected by the US Environmental Protection Agency as one of three Flagship beaches for the state of Massachusetts that serve as models for beach managers in water quality monitoring and pollution assessments and because of its health.
The eastern section of the harbor is connected through a culvert to Pilgrim Lake, historically known as Eastern Harbor, and later as East Harbor. In the 17th and 18th centuries, East Harbor was the most protected mooring place in Provincetown for boats using Cape Cod Bay and the Gulf of Maine. East Harbor had a wide inlet into Provincetown Harbor during that period. Later, this was diked to allow traffic to be redirected from the east side of the lake and a railroad to be built. During the 19th century, the dike became clogged with vegetation, beginning the demise of native wildlife populations in East Harbor. Tidal flow was successfully restored by the National Park Service working together with other local, state, and federal agencies. In 2005, for the first time since Abraham Lincoln was president, legal-size clams were found in East Harbor.
Read more about this topic: Provincetown Harbor
Famous quotes containing the words marine and/or life:
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—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
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