Birds aren’t the only New Englanders on the move this season. Beneath the waves, some of the ocean’s most impressive travelers are swimming journeys of thousands of miles — and you can meet four of them right here in Boston, at the New England Aquarium.
Sturgeon are living fossils: they’ve glided through Earth’s waters for more than 200 million years, and the Aquarium’s shovelnose sturgeon still carry the bony plates and ancient features of their long-extinct relatives. The striped bass — a beloved New England icon — travels between fresh and salt water, returning to rivers and estuaries each spring to spawn.
The Atlantic salmon may be the most storied migrant of all. Born in freshwater, it swims out to sea to grow up, then fights its way back upstream — guided by Earth’s magnetic field — to spawn in the very stream where it hatched.
And then there are the sea turtles. Loggerhead Retread and the Aquarium’s green sea turtles remind visitors that some of these gentle giants cover more than 13,000 miles in a single migration, steered by an inner compass no GPS can match.
Best of all, what scientists learn by tracking these travelers helps protect them. Satellite tags and field research from the Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life are filling in the ocean’s map, one tagged turtle at a time. It’s a perfect family outing: come for the wonder, leave with a story worth retelling.
Photo: New England Aquarium
