#desert pupfish

[fish-daily]

would love to see the beloved desert pupfish

fish 298 - desert pupfish

[wildwormies]

Can u explain the lore of the devil's hole pupfish bc I'm not finding much

[cracks knuckles] ahahahaaahahaaa

Alright so devils anus hole, right? It’s in the middle of the desert, Death Valley National Park to be exact. It’s the opening to a vast underwater cave system, but the only habitable area is right near the top where plants can grow, that’s where the pupfish is. That one, tiny shelf in an entire cavern of mineral soup. There’s about 200 of them today but back when it was first found in the 60s it was probably closer to 30-40. We almost wiped them out then and there bc companies in the area were using groundwater and shrinking the tiny part of the cave capable of sustaining life, but they were declared endangered in 1967. Companies tried to dispute ownership of the land in the 80s but that only made the government want to protect it more, making it a national monument for this 3/4 of an inch fish that benefited no one by existing.

The part I considered “too much” for a kids’ show isn’t really related to the fish themselves, and it’s not entirely confirmed, but I find it funny. Charles Manson apparently meditated in front of the hole for 3 hole days, coming to the conclusion that the entrance to the underworld was at the bottom and planned to drain it so his group could wait out the apocalypse safe and sound. Ofc that never played out but damn imagine if it did

Like, that shit’s just crazy

[sentirse-art]

Desert Pupfish (cyrpindon macularius)

I feel like I finally made a good painting after a while! This guy is actually native to Death Valley and lives in the very few lakes and streams that survive those temperatures. Also it’s a burrowing species like all of my other paintings in this series. There’s something about animals that live in the earth that makes me so proud of them. They survive with little to no sunlight and in conditions where they had to become highly specialized to survive. It’s so fascinating.

[rjzimmerman]

Nevada's critically endangered fish are in an unseasonable spawn after the earthquake set their home rippling

Critically endangered desert pupfish spawning in 2012. (Sharon Keeney)

Excerpt:

Nevada’s endangered desert pupfish are spawning after Alaska’s earthquake sent waves reverberating around their watery home.

Earlier this week, Alaska’s magnitude 7.9 earthquake triggered a small tsunami. Waves only three to eight inches tall washed in along shores from British Columbia through California. But the shaking also rippled across the continent, setting off waves in Devil’s Hole, an 18-foot-long pool that branches deep into the Nevada aquifer. The sloshing water was reflected in the pool, building into waves—also known as a sieche—over a foot tall, Abby Wines writes in a statement for Death Valley National Park. The seiche didn’t cause any damage, but it did disrupt the pool’s most famous inhabitant, the desert pupfish, causing the creatures to unseasonably spawn.

Desert pupfish usually spawn during the spring and the fall but any disruption of their environment can spark another spawning event, biologist Ambre Chaudoin tells Wines. The males turn a brilliant blue when they spawn, while the females are a subdued grey to silvery blue.

Desert pupfish are critically endangered and live only in Devil’s Hole. Though this limestone cavern dives over 400 feet deep below the Mojave Desert, the inch-long fish live in just the upper 80 feet of the pool. The fish eat algae that grows in a shallow sunlit shelf at the top of the hole, and spawn on a tiny shallow shelf.

Researchers were lucky to have had a video camera running when an earthquake in Mexico in 2012 caused the same “seiche” effect in Devil’s Hole:

[vintagewildlife]

Desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius) By: William V. Ward From: Natural History Magazine 1937

[the-mists-of-time]

[anthropocenesketchbook]

Desert pupfish critical habitat at the Salton Sea.

Ink and watercolor.