My birding friend Jacquie and I just returned from a mid-summer birding trip to Newfoundland. But instead of being blown away by the bucket-loads of puffins, guillemots, fulmars, gannets and the other exquisite seabirds that we saw, two things trumped these fabulous birds; a small, smelly, silvery-green fish called capelin and the opal-blue icebergs that were around Newfoundland this summer in record numbers.

A Keystone Fish

With the simply horrible Latin name - Mallotus villosus, capelin (pronounced by Newfoundlanders as “cape lin” and sometimes spelled “caplin”) are nothing less than the keystone species holding together both human communities and marine ecosystems. Capelin are plankton feeders like their cousins herring and smelt and as such are near the bottom of the marine food-chain. Hence, many other mouths depend upon the annual capelin migration including cod, puffins and other seabirds, whales, and humans. If the annual capelin run is meager, everyone suffers.

Capelin are a “Holarctic” species in that they are found at high northern latitudes in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Right around the summer solstice each year capelin migrate inshore where males and females converge on sandy beaches to mate at night, and release their millions of eggs into the sand. Capelin spawn at the age of 2–6 years, and have an extremely high mortality after spawning - for males close to 100 percent die.

In Newfoundland and other high latitude communities, and I mean everyone, waits for every summer, dare I say it, with bait-like breadth! Whale, cod, and humans mark their year and all wait patiently for “Capelin Time.”

Capelin Time is what every Newfoundlander still living on the island waits for and Newfoundlanders that are off-island dream about. One old timer told us how his family would gather the capelin and put a fish on either side of each potato plant in their gardens to fertilize their crop. When he was a kid and his father delivered the mail by dog team, they would toss the capelin high on the shore and bag up the dried fish and feed them to their dogs to get them through the winter.

Everywhere Jacquie and I went we heard stories from people about capelin. In addition, everywhere we looked offshore we saw seabirds and whales literally gorging themselves on this short-lived but super-abundant summer fish.

Jacquie and I had the great fortune to stay at Dunne’s Bed and Breakfast Ferryland on the Avalon Peninsula. The Dunne family includes singers and musicians and they are presently enjoying a local hit with a song called, you guessed it, Capelin Time! Here is a wonderful YouTube video of the Dunne’s singing Capelin time at their dining room table.

Like the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti, the palolo worm in the South Pacific, the capelin run in Newfoundland is something that all species, human and nonhuman, rely upon. In the South Pacific, indigenous populations use the reproductive portion of the palolo worm as a food source. During their short lived annual appearance in the last quarter of the moon in October and November, palolo worms are enthusiastically gathered with a net, and are eaten either raw or cooked. This event is so important to islanders that it is featured in their lunar calendar.

Capelin Time comes around the summer solstice in late June and early July, but no one knows exactly when or for that matter whether or not the capelin run will occur at all. Hence, you hear people constantly asking, “are the capelin rolling? are they in yet?” In this June-July window foggy, cold weather and days with high “moon” tides are referred to as “Capelin Weather” and this is when folks head to shore with nets, buckets and bare hands.

When the capelin are super abundant, as they were this year, the fish literally come right out of the water and onto the shore in a spawning frenzy.

Colder, Older, Denser, Gassier

Along with capelin, this was also a fantastic year for icebergs in eastern Newfoundland. The west Greenland glaciers, which are the source of 90 percent of Newfoundland icebergs, have been calving off bergs in record numbers in recent years. Greenland glaciers are among the fastest moving in the world at approximately five miles per year producing between 10,000 and 15,000 icebergs per year.

After calving off the Greenland glaciers icebergs drift south in the Labrador Current and enter “Iceberg Alley,” which extends south along the coast of Newfoundland.

It takes approximately two to three years for these massive icebergs to reach Newfoundland covering a distance of 1,600 nautical miles. Hence, the icebergs that Jacquie and I were seeing are several years old. Indeed, it was a Greenland iceberg that the HMS Titanic struck on April 12, 1912 near Newfoundland resulting in the deaths of 1,514 of its 2,223 passengers.

Because the density of pure ice is slightly less than that of seawater only about one-tenth of the volume of an iceberg shows above the water. The shape of the underwater portion can be difficult to surmise by looking at the tip of the iceberg as the Titanic crew learned the hard way on that night to remember.

We were surprised to learn that the ice that comes from icebergs ice is very different from the ice that comes out of our freezers in the following ways.

Iceberg ice is much older, in excess of 10,000 or more years, dating back to the last glacial period. Iceberg ice also has more trapped gases that when analyzed for carbon dioxide levels provides a window onto past climates. Iceberg ice is also much colder than normal ice, with a temperature of from +5˚ F to −4 °F.

Finally, iceberg ice is much denser, which means it melts slower and makes a faint popping sound as the gases escape and the ice expands. We learned this when we poured wonderful Newfoundland “Screech” rum over iceberg ice!

Jacquie and I simply lucked out that as this summer was an banner year for capelin and icebergs. Even though the capelin and icebergs turned out to be the standout features of our trip to Newfoundland the birding and botanizing was superb as was the over-the-top hospitality we were shown by every Newfoundlander we met.

if you are interested in learning more about eastern Newfoundland, please feel free to contact me at podolsky@att.net .

Richard Harris Podolsky lives in Rockport