sheephead

On California’s North Coast, where other urchin nemeses — like otters, spiny lobsters and sheephead — are lacking, 96% of the region’s kelp forests vanished in the decade following the sea star collapse.

The skinny señorita fish, the sex-changing sheephead, the blue-gray blacksmith, schools of rockfish and a horn shark — they’re all going about their business in a 7,500-gallon aquarium at Union Station’s east portal entrance, their audience largely reduced to marine biologist Dan Gilboa, who comes every week to check on his underwater community.

Sheephead are also running at the jetties.

Sheephead also are running at the jetties.

The Department of Environmental Conservation says freshwater drum, also called sheephead, are growing much bigger than they ever have in New York waters.