An "Odd Duck" Northern Cardinal

[stumpstalker]

This one doesn’t lend itself quite so much to double entendre – but I’m sure we’ll find a way.

The case with the illustrated Striped Bass is not one of vacillating between the male and female sex. Rather, the change in appearance is attributed to the fish adapting its coloration to its environment, to be more camouflaged.

The light green morph blends the fish more with the sandy bottom of the waters on the South side of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The dark color matches more the rocky, kelp and mussel bed-bestrewn bottom of the Cuttyhunk and Vineyard Sound areas, just a few miles West of the sandy South-side.

This Bass was caught at Devil’s Bridge, a boulder-riddled underwater projection off of Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard, which location is at the nexus of the two diverging and contrasting bottom habitats. This Striper apparently was “transitioning” from one type of camouflage to another, and caught in the act.

I asked a marine biologist if they do this automatically or if the fish motivate the color-change. He leaned more to believing that it was motivated. But, as far as I know, it is still a scientific mystery.