Believed Extinct, Fish Resurfaces

December 8, 2005

Release from: Joey Holleman
The State (South Carolina)

Biologist Forrest Sessions opened the chute from a huge fish tank, releasing about a thousand robust redhorses into the Wateree River in less than a minute Wednesday.

That’s about a thousand more of that fish species than anybody found in the Wateree in the past century.

Like a fish version of the ivory-billed woodpecker, this distinctive large species was feared extinct and lived mainly in the dreams of biologists for decades. Also, like the famous woodpeckers, a small robust redhorse population finally revealed itself (in the Oconee River in Georgia in 1991).

The comparison ends there, however, because while the ivory-billed woodpecker might never again be common in Southeastern forests, robust redhorses very well could return to the rocky shoals of inland rivers in large numbers.

And the shift from thought-to-be-extinct to common could be done without the fish making the endangered species list because of a multistate effort.

“This is a species we may have a good chance of keeping around,” said Bud Freeman, director of the Georgia Museum of Natural History. “But if we don’t reintroduce these fish, they don’t have a prayer.”

Saving a fish species, while complicated, has some big advantages over trying to bring back a bird species. Woodpeckers, for instance, don’t lay thousands of eggs each year.

A second remnant population of robust redhorses discovered in the 1990s in the Savannah River has been especially fruitful. In 2004, scientists harvested about 40,000 eggs and sperm from six females and 16 males at a spawning area near Augusta, said Forrest Sessions, a fisheries biologist for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

In the wild, a small percentage of those fish would live. At the Dennis Wildlife Center in Bonneau, almost all of the larvae produced in 2004 and three-quarters produced in 2005 survived, Sessions said.

About 36,000 have been put in the Broad River in the Upstate in the past two years, and Wednesday’s release was the second release of several thousand into the Wateree just below the Lake Wateree dam. Others have been stocked in the Oconee, Ocmulgee and Ogeechee rivers in Georgia.

Scientists won’t be sure whether the fish are thriving and reproducing for about a decade, said Ross Self, who is heading up the effort for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. The males reach sexual maturity in about four years, the females in about six years.

Adults average 25 inches and nine pounds, about twice as large as other sucker species in the rivers. That makes it difficult to fathom how they hid from scientists for so long.

The reintroduction effort is a joint project by South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and federal natural resource agencies and the power companies that operate dams on rivers. They signed a document that commits them to extraordinary efforts to restore the fish in the wild, but it also requests that the species not be declared endangered.

Scientists can work more quickly without the sometimes burdensome permit process involved with endangered species, Sessions said.

The National Wildlife Federation, sometimes critical of government environmental efforts, views the agreement more as a way to encourage reintroduction of the species than a way to get around the endangered species act, said federation attorney John Kostyack.

Also, federal officials can start the process of declaring the species endangered at any time if problems arise.

For now, things are going swimmingly. After switching the chute to another tank Wednesday, Sessions pumped another thousand robust redhorses into the Wateree.

Wednesday’s release marked a new phase. The fish released earlier were less than a year old and about five inches long. These were two years old and about eight inches long. They might be more likely to live, Sessions said.

The truth is scientists have to use a lot of “mights” and “coulds” when discussing the robust redhorse. The only scientific reference to the species was by naturalist Edward Drinker Cope in North Carolina’s Yadkin River in 1870.

Based on archaeological evidence, robust redhorses once were common in rivers throughout South Carolina and in portions of Georgia and North Carolina. They use strong jaws and teeth to crunch aquatic clams.

Scientist believe the cutting of forests on rivers’ banks allowed sediment to wash into the rivers, killing the clams and, thus, making life tough for robust redhorses. Hydroelectric dams also swamped many of their habitats.

A less popular theory is that the tasty fish, easy to catch by hand during spawning, were depleted by voracious settlers. If you happen to catch one, it’s not illegal to keep, though state officials would prefer you release the fish.

The robust redhorse isn’t considered a traditional game fish. It has no real commercial value, but it represents a rare chance for humans to repair damage they did to the ecosystem.

“We thought that it was extinct and now we have a chance to bring this fish back,” Sessions said. “You don’t have an opportunity to do that very often.”