The Gulf Stream off our Shores 



By ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYER 



Director of the Department of Marine Zoology, Carnegie Institution of Washington 



IT IS on that vague borderland where 

 things antagonistic blend that so 

 much of charm and interest lies. 

 Nor is science exempt from this general 

 law for in the domain of blended inter- 

 ests, in physical chemistry, and biological 

 medicine, research has enriched most 

 notably the thought of the modern 

 world. Nor is the naturalist free from 

 this alluring fascination of the border- 

 land, as of the forested river bank close 

 to the desert sands, of the mountain 

 peak where familiar things commingle 

 with the strange ones of the tropics and 

 wild strawberries mature beneath the 

 shade of tree ferns. 



Thus, of all our coasts, the waters of 

 southern New England have most of 

 this varied interest of a region of blended 

 faunas. Here during early spring one 

 finds among the melting ice vast swarms 

 of floating creatures which have been 

 driven far to the southward of their 

 Arctic home by the cold northeasters 

 of our winter. 



In March and early April they mature 

 with remarkable rapidity only to perish 

 in the insuiferably warm water as the 

 season advances. Then, in August, 

 their place is taken by rare and occa- 

 sional wanderers from the tropics blown 

 far from the blue region of the Gulf 

 Stream to languish for a time in the chill 

 waters off our shores. 



Thus flitting over the hot sand and dig- 

 ging burrows into the beaches of southern 

 Long Island, one finds the tiny young 

 of the ghost crab, Ocypoda, the floating 

 larvfe of which have made the long jour- 

 ney from the Carolinas or the Bahamas 

 only to die as autumn advances. 



Indeed, as is well known, the vast 

 majority of the minute young of marine 

 animals swim or float in the ocean during 

 their early stages; and this applies to 

 such sedentary creatures as sea ane- 

 mones, corals, starfishes, oysters, clams, 

 and even sponges. Thus these feebly- 

 swimming, usually transparent larvse 

 may be carried by ocean currents for 

 hundreds of miles during their several 

 weeks of free life only to settle down, 

 wholly change their appearance, and 

 pass into the monotonous quietude of 

 their adult days. 



In this manner the tiny, pear-shaped 

 larvpe of the corals, although only as 

 large as pin heads, have been carried far 

 to the northward to settle upon Ber- 

 muda, or to form the most northerly of 

 the world's coral reefs off Beaufort, 

 North Carolina. 



Even in Great Peconic Bay, Long 

 Island, we find wanderers from the 

 tropics making themselves at home, at 

 least two jellyfishes and a slender-armed 

 serpent star, Ophiura hrevispina, from 

 the West Indies being of their number. 



The "sea wasp" jellyfish, Tamoya 

 kaplonema, is a pale, livid creature whose 

 relatives spend most of their lives in the 

 depths of the sea commonly coming to 

 the surface only to cast out their eggs 

 or sperm. This Long Island medusa is 

 rarely seen, for it gropes languidly over 

 the bottom capturing fish and small 

 shrimps by means of the stings inflicted 

 by its four pale pink, whiplike tentacles. ' 

 Its bell is cubical and about four inches 

 high and near the pulsating margin, set 

 each within a niche, there are four little 

 knobs studded with eyes all looking. 



501 



