A Bifax Trip To Elmore County, Alabama

I went out yesterday with Travis and Steven to visit three historic Fundulus bifax sites in Elmore County, Alabama. This is as far downstream along the Tallapoosa River that the species has ever been found. All three of these sites are in the Channahatchee Creek system.

The trip didn't start so auspiciously, as at the first site the creek was a series of swampy pools due to beaver dams. The water was turbid and deep, neither one good for bifax. We poked around and decided not to sample since I figured it was neither safe nor effective.

The second site, down the same road -- Highway 63, Kowliga Street (as in the famous Hank Williams song about the wooden Indian) -- looked somewhat better from the road, and we were able to walk down a dirt path to move downstream. The substrate was sand with large patches of soft, puffy sediment that was easily mobilized by walking through it. We quickly caught a bunch of shiners, mostly pretty shiners, but that was it. We didn't see any fish that could be bifax, and usually you can see this fish before you catch it. Several small ditches drained fields in the area where goats and cattle were grazing, and I think these animals were the source of much of the puffy sediment we found in the creek. This wouldn't be good for bifax since their eggs are deposited in the sand, and require no sediment sitting on them to allow enough oxygen uptake for growth and hatching. Two fish collections made at this site over 20 years ago caught 10 or more bifax. I have a bad feeling the species really is gone from this site, at least for now.

The third site was the lower part of Channahatchee Creek not far from where it runs into Lake Martin, the impoundment of the Tallapoosa River. This site at Highway 229 has a new, high bridge with a utility access road alongside it for the power line there. The creek is much wider than the other two sites, and has a mostly sandy substrate with a loading of puffy sediment. It took some effort to get down to the water because of the over-engineering of the bridge. We waded upstream and started to sample likely looking habitat, especially areas alongside sandbars with less current. Finally, about 200 meters upstream, I found the ideal looking sandbar and there was a single bifax hanging in the shallows. Steven and Travis quickly set the seine and scooped up the fish. And that was our only bifax for the day. I might have seen a few more about another 100 meters upstream, near the ruins of an old bridge, but we couldn't corner them. So home we went.

As of now we've found bifax at seven sites in four creek systems, one each in Randolph, Coosa, Tallapoosa and Elmore counties. And there is still a healthy population in Sofkahatchee Creek in Elmore County since Joe Scanlan collected them there last year, an anomalous population in the Coosa River drainage rather than Tallapoosa. The Channahatchee population seems iffy, although it should probably be resampled. I still hope to survey streams in the Tallapoosa drainage where bifax has never been reported, but I suspect that there's likely to four solid creek populations and not too much more. By late fall I should have a better idea, and of course I'll be happy to tell you.