"Nemo Found" - The Web Follow Up to Native Fish @ The Toledo Zoo

Greetings! I will be working on this over the next couple days. I plan to compile these lists into a more useful information with links to photographs and interpretation about the animals we've seen. For now, what you see here is what is :) I will probably move our camp to its own folder, as I plan on using this for any future camps or learning events with the Zoo. If that happens, you'll just find a link here on this page with your camp week. So you will always be able to refer to this site, and maybe even see some other things from future camps that you may have participated in person, or just by surfing the web. In the meantime, I am available by email if you have any questions at todd@farmertodd.com Thanks for stopping by! Todd 8/17 - Okay... All sites are described, all species linked to sites. Now to make some data sheets for species, and then go back and edit. There are probably typos and jumbled sentences, please ignore them :) 8/16 - Made some headway today. The photos I had and their captions are completed. I will describe our sites next, link our species list to those sites, and will create "Data Sheets" for the different species of fish that I have photos or information about. I then hope to add a section on captive care for some of the species appropriate for home aquariums.
The Photos This is what I know everyone is excited to see, so let's just get the show on the road! If anyone has digital pictures from the week, please email them to me and I'll be more than glad to post them here. And if you want to read all that "boring" data and see species we observed, keep scrolling down :)



The Sites All of our collecting locations can be considered part of the Maumee River watershed, or influenced by the Maumee River watershed. A watershed is the total area of land that drains into a stream. Larger streams feeding into the Maumee River are the Tiffin R, the Auglaize R, the Blanchard R, the Ottawa R (Hardin, Allen, Putnam Co), the St. Mary's R and the St. Joseph R. A myriad of smaller streams, creeks and ditches feed these larger streams that feed the Maumee River, and the final destination for the Maumee is into Lake Erie at Toledo, OH. Historically, the Ottawa River (Lucas and Fulton Co) was it's own watershed, and may still be considered to be. However, multiple drainage ditches have connected it with Swan Creek in Western Lucas County. This connection shares the same water and allows species to move from one stream to the other, as the ditches are usually free flowing a large part of the year. The Maumee watershed is greatly stressed by the predominant agricultural land use of the region. The majority of the Maumee watershed is a very fertile glacial lake plain (Glacial Lake Maumee) and siltation, fertilizer enrichment, and insectiside pollution due to agricultural use without vegetative buffers (riparian zones) are incredibly taxing on the organisms trying to make a living in the watershed. Stream quality varies greatly stream to stream, dependent on how local land use is applied. For example, Nettle Creek that we sampled in Williams Co is in 100% compliance with standards the EPA has determined for stream health. However, one stream to the south, Eagle Creek, which shares the same geologic factors, has the same stream characteristics, is only 60% compliant due to different land use practices. The accumulative effect from all these streams into the Maumee is incredible. However, life persists in the seasonally harsh conditions, as the Maumee still supports 94 species of fish, and 42 species of mussels. This is the greatest amount of diversity in any of the Lake Erie watershed streams, and only a marginal amount of effort to restore vegetative buffers would increase that diversity's standard of living by orders of magnitude. Site 1 - Jermaine Park at Upton, Ottawa River, Toledo, OH Primary riffle upstream from the current Lake Erie Plain, created by "rip rap" rocks used to stabalize the bank around the Upton bridge. The site is very degraded by the accumulation of upstream activity, mainly siltation and non-source point enrichment and pollution such as fertilizers and insectides. At times septic runoff from improperly installed "leach beds" and cattle droppings are an issue of human health, which introduces loads of coliform bacteria (E-coli). This can be an issue in all Ohio streams, no matter how "clean" it looks, or what signs local government have taken the time to post. Avoid getting water in your mouth from any Ohio stream! The degredation has allowed fish like the creek chub (normally found in headwaters, but very tolerant of pollution) to assemble with a different fish community, one normally associated with Lake Erie or large streams. The logperch darter and emerald shiner are good examples of the normal fish association for this site, and are still present because they are two of the more pollution tolerant species. The gizzard shad would be another tolerant species, but we did not happen to get them in our sample (normally seen in samples at this site, we saw them at Site 9). Site 2 - Harroun Park at Main, Tenmile Creek (Ottawa R), Sylvania, OH Ten Mile Creek through Sylvania consists of shallow rock riffles, some pools on top of a ridge of Sylvania Devonian Limestones, which were exposed by the glacier. Glacial erratics are present (huge granite rocks deposited by the glacier) and a large portion of the limestone rocks are softball size. The stream quality here is decent, as it is well aerated, receives a lower silt load due to some "prefiltering" in the Oak Openings region, which is sand and not intensively used by agriculture like the headwaters of Tenmile in Fulton County. However, channelization (straightening and culverting) through Sylvania has incredible degenerative effects downstream, such as at Site 1, by greatly increasing the velocity of the water as it passes through this stream segment. This increases the amount of corrosive forces to stream banks downstream, which hugely increases the siltation once the velocity is diminished. Site 3 - Langenderfer Ditch at Bancroft and Schwamberger, Tenmile Creek (Ottawa R), Swanton, OH This is where it all begins. Langenderfer ditch is a primary drainage for the interface between the historic Great Black Swamp and the wetlands of the Oak Openings. It has a solid bottom, composed mainly of gravel and sand with some clayey silts. It is normal to have water running through in all seasons, even though it is completely human made. The ditch has nice stream-like characteristics at normal water levels, with pools, runs, riffles and a winding pattern that is the makings of a decent stream with multiple habitats. However, it flash floods horribly in the wet months, and can be 9 feet deep with a current similar to the Maumee River at flood stage. Let me again remind you to stay AWAY from ANY ditch where you CAN NOT see the bottom. It is very difficult to determine the depth, and this can put you in a very risky situation! This site is rich with all types of life (fish and invertebrate), and is a spawning ground and nursery for many species of fish. To date, I have captured 16 species of fish in this ditch. The ditches of Northwest Ohio have essentially turned into the spawning grounds of species that would have used the Great Black Swamp or the wetlands of the Oak Openings. It will be interesting to see what Lake Run species begin to use the ditches if the dam at Secor road is removed. Site 4 - Lake Erie at the Bass Islands, OSU Stone Labratories, Gilbralter Island We had two sample sites on this trip, the first out in the open lake West of South Bass State Park, and the second, on the shore of Gilbralter Island. At the open lake site, our substrate sample showed how clayey silts had accumulated in this area due to silt transported by the Maumee and Portage Rivers in Ohio, and the Raisin River in Michigan. This is unfavorable to the historic aquatic ecosystem, as it is devoid of oxygen at a very shallow depth in the substrate, and the lack of life in this sediment sample portrayed this (especially when compared to amount of diversity found in the wave zone on the island). Our second site is frequently scoured by wave action, and the bare, polished rocks were indicative of this. There were large grain sands and gravel present, underlying the rock. It is a highly oxygenated zone, with many oxygenated-loving insect larvae, as seen in our invertebrate sample. Site 5 - Canoe Access west of Riverbend Park on CR , Blanchard River (Maumee R), Findlay, OH This site was one of our first examples of a higher quality stream. We saw a great diversity of habitats due to proper vegetative buffer and flood plain access, and found an equal amount of aquatic life diversity in a very small area. To illustrate this, we saw as many species of fish in this 30 yard segment as we did the entire day on the Ottawa River, sampling three completely different stream segments! The abundance of mussels and aquatic invertebrate larvae also spoke to the quality of this site. The Blanchard takes an interesting right angle turn just upstream at Riverbend Park, where it is diverted in its course West by the southern end of the Defiance Moraine. The Blanchard originates ~30 miles to the south on the North side of the Ft. Wayne Moraine. A moraine is a pile of earth sediments left at a terminal point of a glacier. It looks like rolling hills in our part of the state. A moraine provides a large amount of different sized rocks and sediments the glacier had picked up along its course. The substrate is mainly bedrock exposed by the glacier and the river. However, there are a great diversity of habitats in the form of gravel and sand bars, riffles, and pools, all created by different deposits from the moraine eroding and the action of the water on weak points in the bedrock. Did I just say "erode" paired with "diverse"? Yes, not all erosion is bad. In fact, natural erosion supports the greatest amounts of aquatic diversity. It's the catastrophic deluges of "liquid mud" humans create that is harmful to aquatic life. Site 6 - "The Outlet" Ditch at CR , Blanchard River (Maumee R), Carey, OH "The Outlet" is a large ditch that drains the Springville Marsh, which is a large fen. A fen is a unique wetland plant community that thrives on alkaline (hard water, high pH) soils. While the agricultural practices along this ditch could help by using larger vegetative buffers, the close proximity to the fen and its guarded water quality has allowed this ditch community to develop into a great amount of aquatic diversity. I must admit, I was scared upon entering it, as there was a 6" layer of "liquid mud" deposited from spring and summer agriculture run off. However, on the first seine haul, my fears were allayed as we probably caught 30 large fish. The stream is still only fertile at this point, instead of being over-enriched, and overwhelmed by sediments, contaminants and such as we saw at Site 1. To make another comparison, in 5 seine hauls at "The Outlet", we saw the same number of species that we saw in our extensive sampling at Sites 1 and 2! Site 7 - Beaver Creek Wildlife Area, Beaver Creek (Tiffin R - Maumee R), Montpelier, OH Beaver Creek is a tributary of the Tiffin River which cuts through western Fulton county into the Maumee River mainstem. The Tiffin follows the eastern edge of the Ft. Wayne Moraine, which down toward Kenton, OH also begins the Blanchard River (Site 5). Beaver Creek flows from the crest of the Ft. Wayne Morine in eastern Williams county, eastward, down the slope or the moraine. The substrate of Beaver Creek is varied sizes of rocks, gravel and sand, liberated out of the moraine by natural erosion. Beaver Creek is very interesting in its fish community, as it is more like an Eastern or Southern Ohio higher quality headwater stream (blacknose dace, suckers, common shiner, fantail darters all abundant) where the general topography is hilly and the streams are gravelly and rocky. However, the fish in this stream are isolated from that habitat by the Glacial Lake Maumee lake plain and is completely surrounded by the agricultural practices going on in this region. The presence of the blacknose dace is especially impressive, as they are turbidity intolerant (they're neither coming or going on the Tiffin or the Maumee), and have probably been isolated on this moraine since connections to lakes and streams in Michigan (which becomes again their habitat) dried up and/or settlement clear cutting liberated the silt into the streams, which we still see today. This type of isolation can create new species by adaptive mutations, and a genetic investigation for this population of blacknose dace might be necessary to determine if there is any genetic uniqueness. Site 8 - Nettle Creek at CR , (St Joseph R - Maumee R), Pioneer, OH Nettle Creek is another moraine stream, running down the east slope of the Wabash Moraine in Northwest Williams County. It is the only stream section of the Maumee Watershed in Ohio meeting 100% of its Clean Water Act goals. This is evident in the greatly diverse and prolific fish community, as is also evident by the huge populations of amphibians, which benefit from the essentially contaminant free aquatic habitat to develop from their tadpole larvae. If all of Ohio were as populated with frogs as is this stream, I just couldn't imagine the chorus in the spring prior to settlement. There are frogs literally every step! The stream characteristics are much like as was described for Site 7, so I won't go into those details. What I will describe, is how the abundant presence of the river chub (not to be confused with the creek chub, different family) is an exciting find in this stream. Fish in the family Nocomis are nest builders, which create elaborate nests out of gravel and guard their eggs and young. While this is beneficial for the chub's offspring, a benefit or need has also been shown for an increasing number of minnow and shiner species, which also spawn over the nest, allowing the chub to care and protect for their young. This is an important link in stream diversity that has been lost in a large portion of Ohio, and especially in the Maumee Watershed, where silts and pollution have displaced the Nocomis chubs, and therefore their nest associates in the majority of the system. Site 9 - Lake Erie near Ottawa NWR, Oak Harbor, OH Site 9 is the shoreline of the open Lake near the Davis Bessie power plant. The substrate is composed of sand, whole and smashed mussel shells (native and exotic) and is a constantly shifting habitat dependant on wave action. On our sample, we have three foot waves which prevented effective sampling, and kept us tight to the shoreline. However, on a visit three days earlier, the Lake was calm and a large cloud of phytoplankton (alage) had drifted in, and was pinned against the shore. This created a huge food web where zooplankton was feeding on the phytoplankton, small fish and invertebrates were feeding on the zooplankton, and larger fishes were feeding on the smaller fish and invertebrates. It was amazing to watch the top level predatory fish dash into the plankton cloud and see thousands of minnows and shiners errupt from the cloud! So, while this may appear to be an infertile habitat, it's quite the exact opposite, and can be demonstrated fairly easily in calmer "seas". I wouldn't trade anything for that steelhead and lamprey though! :)
The Fishes Family Petromyzontidae - Lampreys Sea lamprey - Petromyzon marinus \|9\| Family Salmonidae - Trouts Steelhead trout - Oncorhynchus mykiss \|9\| Family Clupeidae - Herrings Gizzard shad - Dorosoma cepedianum \|9\| Family Umbridae - Mudminnows Central mudminnow - Umbra limi \|3\| Family Esocidae - Pikes Grass pickerel - Esox americana vermiculatus \|3\|6\| Family Cyprinidae - Minnows Central stoneroller - Campostoma anomalum \|1\|2\|3\|5\|6\|7\|8\| Spotfin shiner - Cyprinella spiloptera \|5\| Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio \|6\| Silverjaw minnow - Ericymba buccata \|6\| Common shiner - Luxilus cornutus \|6\|7\|8\| Striped shiner - Luxilus chrysocephalus \|2\| Redfin Shiner - Lythrurus umbratilis \|2\|5\|6\|7\| River chub - Nocomis micropogon \|8\| Golden shiner - Notemigonus crysoleucas \|6\| Emerald shiner - Notropis atherinoides \|1\|4\| Suckermouth minnow - Phenacobius mirabilis \|5\|7\| Bluntnose minnow - Pimephales notatus \|1\|2\|3\|5\|6\|7\|8\| Fathead minnow - Pimephales promelas \|1\| Blacknose dace - Rhinichthys atratulus \|7\| Creek chub - Semotilus atromaculatus \|1\|2\|3\|6\|7\|8\| Family Catostomidae - Suckers White Sucker - Catostomus commersoni \|7\|8\| Northern hogsucker - Hypentelium nigricans \|8\| Family Ictaluridae - Bullhead catfishes Yellow bullhead - Ameiurus natalis \|3\|5\|6\|7\|8\| Brindled madtom - Noturus miurus \|5\| Family Pecopsidae - Trout-perches Trout-perch - Percopsis omiscomaycus \|4\| Family Fundulidae - Killifishes Blackstripe topminnow - Fundulus notatus \|5\| Family Moronidae - Temperate basses White perch - Morone americana \|4\|9\| Family Centrarchidae - Sunfishes Rock bass - Ambloplites rupestris \|5\|6\| Green sunfish - Lepomis cyanellus \|1\|2\|3\|5\|6\|7\|8\| Pumpkinseed sunfish - Lepomis gibbosus \|1\| Bluegill sunfish - Lepomis macrochirus \|1\|2\|5\|6\|7\| Northern longear sunfish - Lepomis megalotis peltastes \|5\|6\| Largemouth bass - Micropterus salmoides \|2\|4\|5\|7\|8\| White crappie - Pomoxis annularis \|7\| Family Percidae - Perches Greenside darter - Etheostoma blennioides \|5\|7\| Rainbow darter - Etheostoma caeruleum \|5\| Fantail darter - Etheostoma flabellare \|7\| Johnny darter - Etheostoma nigrum \|2\|3\|5\|7\|8\| Orangethroat darter - Etheostoma spectabile \|1\|2\|3\| Yellow perch - Perca flavescens \|1\|4\| Logperch darter - Percina caprodes \|1\| Blackside darter - Percina maculata \|2\|7\| Family Sciaeudae - Drums Freshwater drum - Aplodinotus grunniens \|4\| Family Gobiidae - Gobies Round goby - Neogobius melanostomus \|1\|4\|9\|
The Mussels I have included links to the species descriptions at the Illinois Natural History Survey, where the index can be found at http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/collections/mollusk/fieldguide.html and is an excellent resource if you would like to learn more about Midwest mussels. Some other links: List of Ohio's Mussels provided by Marietta College Ohio State University Molluscs Collection - Unionidae The Unio Gallery at Southwest Missouri State University (animations of lures!) Our List for the week of August 2-6 We observed nine species which composed all three Subfamilies of Class Unionidae (Subfamily Cumberlandia has been extirpated) found in Ohio. (SSC) = State Species of Special Concern (ST) = State Threatened () = Usually easily found at Van Tassel Access (SR 65 just North of Grand Rapids, OH) on the Maumee, but didn't see because of the very limited sample. Subfamily Ambleminae Threeridge - Amblema plicata* Spike - Elliptio dilatata Wabash pigtoe - Fusconaia flava Pimpleback - Quadrula pustulosa () Mapleleaf - Quadrula quadrula* () Subfamily Anodontinae White heelsplitter - Lasmigona complanata* Giant floater - Pyganodon grandis () Creeper - Strophitus undulatus* () Subfamily Lampsilinae Fragile Papershell - Leptodea fragilis* Threehorn Wartyback - Obliquaria reflexa (ST) Pink Heelsplitter - Potamilus alatus Kidneyshell - Ptychobranchus fasciolaris Deertoe - Truncilla truncata (SSC)

© 2004 Todd Crail