Triggerfish Startles Lobsterman

by Steve Cartwright

 NOAA Photo

Andy Longe, a 19-year-old fisherman from South Bristol, has been hauling and setting lobster traps for five years but had never seen anything like the fish with fangs that he found this summer on the Damariscotta River.

It turned out to be a triggerfish, a tropical species that grows to from six to two-feet long. Their strong teeth can penetrate a sea urchin, or, as Longe feared, a lobster. Even seasoned members of the South Bristol Fishermen’s Co-op had no idea what it was.

Longe has worked five years as sternman for Berkley Weston of Walpole. Weston said in his 36 years of fishing he had never seen the vividly-striped 14-inch fish that came up with a trap set in 4-5 feet of water, unusually warm this year. He said the fish muckled onto a line and it was hard to pry him loose.

Longe and Berkley kept the fish alive all day while they fished, then took their strange find to the University of Maine’s Ira C. Darling Center in nearby Walpole, where lab manager Tim Miller confirmed that triggerfish – colorful in the Caribbean – sometimes are swept to Maine by hurricane currents. They are rarely seen here. Their colors fade and they don’t survive long, he added.

The triggerfish remains on display at the Maine State Aquarium at West Boothbay Harbor, where it is fed crabs. Aimee Hayden-Roderiques, natural science educator, said triggerfish have been reported before in Maine waters, but this year there were at least three reports, one as far down east as Sullivan, and that’s unprecedented, she said.

She believes warming waters may be luring southern species to Maine, including, this summer, sea robins, flying gurnards and seahorses.

Longe, a part-time student at Southern Maine Community College, has heard that triggerfish eat lobsters, and that worried him. “I hate to say it, but where there is one, there are probably more.” Miller said he need not worry. “They die within a couple of days.”

Triggerfish, by the way, are edible. Neither Longe nor Weston were the least bit tempted.