Last night was one of three American Littoral Society Spill Spotter Assessments taking place in the Shark River. The assessment is done to establish the kinds of marine life in the river in case a spill or other emergency that threatens that environment if an event should occur.
With a new net rolled out we did three drags off the park in Neptune City. Several volunteers, including my 8 year old, waited for the nets to be brought in to start identifying and counting the various fish and crustaceans we found.
We found bluefish, pinfish, sticklebacks, kingfish, pufferfish, silversides, winter flounder, spider crabs, blue crabs, and green crabs. We found a few fish that we couldn't identify and they are pictured below.
This one looks like it could be a juvenile pinfish.
The bottom fish looks like a bay anchovy, but others thought it might be a striped anchovy.
I found the below picture on the Maryland DEC website comparing the two....
Bay anchovy
Striped anchovy
Here's some of the others we found......
