Carol and I walked out to the end of State Pier in New Bedford Harbor yesterday, and stood there watching some fishing boats leaving port. We were chatting about something when we were surprised by a splash in the water behind us.

“What was that?”

A hundred feet out in the harbor, we could see ripples and small splashes, and then something big rolled up out of the water and splashed.

“Looks like some big predator fish chasing a school of small bait fish,” I said. I thought maybe they were bluefish, but I’m not a saltwater angler, so I wouldn’t know for sure. Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) winter in Florida, migrate north, and hit the Massachusetts coast sometime in June, but I think of them as arriving later than June 8.

Today when I went out for a walk, I ran into Michael, the librarian at the Whaling Museum Research Library. He was headed across the bridge to Fairhaven, as I was, so we walked along together. On the bridge between Pope’s Island and Fish Island, he stopped and pointed out at the harbor at some ripples and small splashes, and every once in a while something big rolling up out of the water.

“Bluefish,” he said. “They’re up in the harbor already.”

He’s a saltwater fisherman, so I’ll take his word that these were blues. Their arrival means that springtime is almost over.