Take a look at this video produced by Spence Maynor on a recent fish survey in the upper part of the Paint Rock River.
When a fellow on the bank asked us what we were doing knee-deep in the Paint Rock River last week, I told him we were trying to monitor how many species of fish there were in one of the nation’s richest rivers.
It was one of the most conspicuous fishing expeditions on Paint Rock River in more than a decade. There were two dozen scientists with nets and buckets from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Alabama Game and Fish, the Aaabama Aquatic Biodiversity Center, Alabama Geological Survey, Alabama A&M, and our Paint Rock team.
The fellow on the bank had only one question, of course: Did you catch any bass?
It’s amazing that in the state that is the center of fish diversity in North America, we can only seem to know the name of one species. But yes, we caught 3 species of bass, 6 species of sunfish family (shell crackers, green sunfish, bluegill, red spotted, red breast, longear), more than a dozen different members of the perch family, another dozen types of shiners, not to mention rock rollers, hog suckers, white suckers, redhorse, chubs, sculpin and dace of many colors and stripes. In a few hours of effort, we collected at least 45 different species of fish in a few hundred feet of river.
That’s not even close to the number of species we expect are running through this stretch of river. As we follow through with our plans to monitor this river at multiple times of year, we’ll like find 100 or more species of fish using this half mile of stream. That’s more fish species in this little stream than there are in the entire state of California. And yes, I told the fellow standing on the bank, we will likely see even more different kinds of bass species rolling through here.
What’s heartening about this survey is that we’re catching about 40% more species than were caught here in 2010. The highly endangered Paint Rock palezone shiner, known only from a few small streams in Paint Rock Valley, was found this year for the first time in the mainstem of the Paint Rock River. Very rare fish like the Paint Rock blotched log perch were three or four times more common in this survey, probably the result of better water quality and less damage to the river.