500-pound sunfish rescued from Nantucket Harbor

Wildlife rescuers raced against the clock to save a 500-pound ocean sunfish caught in shallow waters off Pokomo Point in Nantucket Harbor.

Rain Harbison and Blair Perkins, who run an animal rescue in Nantucket, received a call one morning last month from Perkins’ son alerting them to a dying sunfish. With the help of Perkins’ friend Carl Bua, who was swimming nearby, the three guided the sunfish to the back of the rescue truck and tied it up.

“We knew we had 15 minutes left to get him back in the water before he died,” Harbison said in a telephone interview with the Globe on Saturday.

Harbison and Perkins raced across the island to Great Point, which lay in the open ocean. They did it in 14 and a half minutes.

“Once we got him into open water, he became very lethargic,” Harbison said. “It was probably a good ten minutes or so before he started to really move around on his own. We had to push it back in a couple of times, but then we watched it float away freely.”

The captured sunfish is just one of many animals Harbison and Perkins have rescued in recent weeks thanks to a phenomenon known as cold stunning. When water temperatures drop too low, sunfish, sea turtles and other ocean creatures quickly lose energy, making it difficult to swim south to warmer waters.

The phenomenon has become worse because climate change has rapidly warmed ocean waters, making it difficult for wildlife to migrate safely south. Perkins said climate change is one of the main reasons why animals are now stranding on shore.

“They’re migrating a little further north than they’re used to, than their normal range,” Perkins said.

When a cold front arrives, animals are often unable to withstand the temperature or reach warmer waters. Perkins said the stranded animals are a “wake-up call” about the effects of climate change on Nantucket, where he grew up.

Perkins and Harbison founded Nantucket Animal Rescue almost a year ago. The idea for the rescue began in 2017 when Harbison spotted boats circling a pod of humpback and right whales swimming offshore.

She immediately called the Coast Guard, who asked her to document the boats chasing the whales.

“Every day for the next six weeks I took thousands of photos of these boats and every day on social media I alerted everyone that I was there,” Harbison said.

She documented the boat’s activities on a Facebook page. Soon after, Harbison and Perkins met while whale watching on the beach.

They married in April 2023, the same year they founded the rescue organization. Today, Harbison and Perkins lead a team of ten volunteer rescuers throughout the island.

“If we can’t get them there, someone else will,” Harbison said. “This is really cool for me.”