High Water Today But We Found The Fish... Alive!

I went out today with Rachel and Christian to collect fish for their respective projects. We had substantial rain in the area Saturday and Sunday, but today was beautiful and clear.

When we arrived at our first site, Limestone Creek at Highway 53 south of Ardmore, Alabama, the water was running fast and high like I haven't seen since early February. Water chemistry reflected the recent rain, with TDS at 38 ppm and pH at 7.1, rather than the more typical 60 ppm and 8.0. Our goal was to catch black darters for Rachel and striped shiners and scarlet shiners for Christian. We've caught as many as 30 black darters at this site for Rachel's research on the reproductive ecology of the species. But today, we were lucky to find three. I'm convinced, but without evidence, that a lot of the adults die this time of year after spawning. And this site has produced surprisingly small adults compared to other sites we've collected. For Christian we found about a dozen scarlet shiners just going into breeding coloration. One male in particular, the largest, has vivid red fins and a patchily turquoise body. And we found about 6 striped shiners, medium sized, roughtly 7 cm long. Almost all of these shiners made it back to the lab alive, where we're holding them in an aquarium until they're executed so their right gill arch can be removed and examined for parasites.

The second site of the day was Swan Creek at Elkton Road, just north of Athens, Alabama. This site was also fast and high compared to our last visit, with similar water chemistry to Limestone Creek. All we wanted at this site were scarlet and striped shiners for Christian's work. We only found two scarlet shiners, but we netted some of the biggest striped shiners I've seen out of local creeks, the biggest one maybe 14 cm long. The funniest thing was that Rachel saw her 80 year old grandmother drive by us without noticing.

Our last stop was Town Creek in downtown Athens, AL, looking for more black darters for Rachel. We didn't see her grandmother at the site, but we could've used her help, as we found 4 black darters after about an hour's effort (along with a few stripetail and greenside darters which we released). One male was still in bright colors, but not as bright as the ones we found a month ago at the site. These four were visibly longer and more robust than the three from Limestone Creek. This site is more eutrophic than the others, with TDS of 75 ppm today; maybe there's more available food? That's a whole research topic in its own right.

So Rachel will do her histological work on the black darters once she finishes her final exams, and Christian will start preparing shiners' gills for parasite examination on Wednesday after her finals are done. I hope to get a decent picture of that large colorful alpha male scarlet shiner on Wednesday and post it for your perusal.