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New find
Well, I finally made it down to the stream I was asking about in my
question on collecting methods. It should provide some interesting
things. In my short survey of the small section that I could get to, I
found a variety of habitats. There were a few deeper pools (over two
feet deep), some riffles, and some areas that were filled with leaf
litter. I saw at least three different looking kinds of fish but had no
means to catch them, there was a school that must have had hundreds of
"shiners" (they were silver fish that occasionally displayed flashes of
silver when they turned their bodies at an angle). I saw one fish on the
bottom that was way too quick for me to be sure what it looked like, but
it appeared to have large pectorals that it was resting on. This was the
largest fish I saw at around 4 or 5 inches. One area that caught my
attention was a dam of sorts of big rocks. Water barely seeped through
there into a pool with a sandy bottom. This pool contained the large
school of shiners, but they stayed over near the far bank in a deeper
area. Upstream of this dam the water was still and looked rather
stagnant at the surface. It was choked with leaves to the point that I
did not have any idea how deep it was. Anyone think there might be fish
in that part? I'm sure there are leaches (sp?), and I really hate those
things...Anyhow, thought I'd share what I found so far. I also just got
accepted as a volunteer at the Louisville Zoo. I will be working in the
HerpAquarium, so I look forward to trying to get them to set up some
native displays ;) The Curator of Ectotherms was asking me if the NFC
did any work with freshwater mussels. Turns out that here in the
Southeast we are home to the most species of freshwater mussels of any
place in the world! He also mentioned that many of these are endangered
or threatened and in need of someone to champion their cause. If anyone
knows of anything neat in Southern Indiana (near Louisville) to collect,
let me know so I can look for it.
Scott McLaughlin
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