Hellbender Hopes

Part 1 HERE.

Matt and Andrew measuring the width of the stream.

We moved along the stream in transects, attempting to examine every large rock we came across.  I felt my feet go numb as I shuffled through the icy water.  As we moved past the coldest current, I was relieved to find the main stretch of river pleasantly warm.  We had feared the recent rains would muddy the waters and obscure our view of the bottom, but even where the river reached my waist, I could just make out the silhouettes of large stones through the water’s reflective surface.  It was a relief to find the stream workable, if not in prime condition.   

Donned in full wet suits, Matt and Andrew drifted along on their stomachs, examining the stream bed.  Matt busily showed Andrew how to search for suitable rocks where hellbenders might be hiding.  The stones had to be large, flattened and provide a tight cavity that lacked a significant current.  Christine and I were to record the number of available rocks and whether they could be flipped or not. 

“I’m gonna need you guys to help hold this one,” Matt said, indicating a broad, flat rock lying a meter below the surface.  Together, we lifted the immense stone slab until it was standing vertically in the water column.  Andrew and I gripped its algae-covered surface, straining to keep the current from toppling the stone backwards.  If this was a hellbender’s home, we wanted to move it as little as possible.  There was a moment of still anticipation as Matt rummaged around in the sediment.  His blue snorkel broke the surface with an excited hum.  A moment later, he popped up with a shiny, squirming hellbender clutched firmly in his gloved hand.  I heard myself let out a cheer of delight.  Matt plopped the squirming mass into his net and handed it to me.  I looked over the rim at the sleek, brown creature, undulating over itself with liquid fluidity.  I reached in and touched its shimmering skin, firm and slippery like Jell-O.

I carefully shuffled along the uneven river bottom back to the shore where we would process the ‘bender.  Matt slid the salamander into a halved PVC pipe to make it easier to work with and measure. In this controlled setting, we could admire the full glory of this enormous amphibian.  Its body was about a foot and a half long (adults can reach 26 inches) and thick around as my forearm.  It was a dark olive, brown with beady, fish-like eyes and wrinkled skin.  Hellbenders possess both lungs and gills, but they breath primarily through the wrinkled flaps of skin along their flanks that have earned them the nickname ‘old lasagna sides.’  Other curious names include ‘snot otter’ and ‘devil dog.’  Despite old fisherman's tales, these formidable-looking salamanders are completely harmless.

Matt Kaunert with an eastern hellbender.

Matt ran a circular PIT tag scanner over the amphibian’s body.  No beep—this was a new capture.  Passive Integrated Transponders, or PIT tags, allow researchers to identify individuals in a population.  They give each animal a unique number that can be read like a barcode.  Using a syringe, Matt injected a small, pill-sized chip under the hellbender’s skin.  The behemoth didn’t even seem to notice. 

“In Ohio the populations are pretty bad.  Here in Pennsylvania they’re doing better and in some streams the numbers are really very good,” Matt explained.  Once found throughout the Ohio River and its tributaries, hellbender populations have decreased by some 82% in Ohio.  Siltation—when streams become chocked with sediment from runoff—is largely to blame for the decline.  Diseases like chytrid fungus (Bd), habitat loss, acid mine drainage and other pollutants are also lead causes.  Combined, these impacts have left the eastern hellbender at risk for extirpation in my home state.  Adults not killed by the changes in their environment face another problem effecting the long-term survival of their species: an inability to successfully reproduce.

Hellbenders are long lived animals; they can survive in the wild for over 30 years.  Hellbenders don’t begin breeding until they are between five and eight years of age.  From August to September, Males defend a territory and excavate a nest.  Females may each lay up to 500 eggs and allow a male to externally fertilize them (a rare trait in salamanders).  The male then guards the eggs until they hatch, fanning them with his tail to provide oxygen, and even selectively eating bad eggs.  When siltation smothers a nest, males are incapable of successfully caring for the eggs and often end up eating the entire batch.  The reasons behind this are not fully understood.

In streams where siltation has been reduced, hellbender populations have still not rebounded.  Many modified streams lack the large rocks under which hellbenders lay their eggs.  That is where Matt’s nest boxes come into play.  These artificial rocks will not only provide hellbenders with a place to nest, but also allow us a noninvasive way to monitor their behavior and reproductive success.  Determining if hellbenders will use these concrete coffins is the trick.  Ohio’s populations are too sparse for a large scale behavioral experiment like this.  That’s why PA, with its relatively intact populations, is the starting point for the project.  If all goes as planned, these boxes will be used to help boost Ohio’s dwindling hellbender numbers to sustainable levels.

Matt and Andrew flipped some 68 rocks and caught three hellbenders and a mudpuppy (a smaller species of fully aquatic salamander) by the end of our search.  The second two ‘benders were smaller, about a foot in length.  “That’s a reassuring size,” Matt pointed out.  Young, three-year-old hellbenders are clearly surviving in these streams—a sign that populations are still healthy.  We were ecstatic to have caught something even when conditions had seemed so poor.

Some streams that Matt surveys have such a dense population that, "every other rock seems to hide a hellbender," he explained.  Soon we will return to PA for more hellbender surveys and to deploy Matt's nest boxes.  We will also be releasing head-started juveniles in streams in Ohio and West Virginia.  It is exciting to be part of the effort to bring back one of Ohio's most impressive amphibians.  

More soon and keep living the field life.
RBW

Herping PA: Concrete and Canoes

Short-headed garter snakes (Thamnophis brachystoma) only occur in one or two counties in extreme eastern Ohio.  Truth be told, it isn’t even known whether they are true natives to the buckeye state.  It is possible they have expanded their range or have been introduced from Pennsylvania, one of only two other states they are known from (the other being New York).  Growing just over a foot in length, the short head is an inhabitant of fields and meadows along waterways.  These elegant earthworm eaters are much smaller than the eastern gartersnake, with a narrow, neckless head and pleasing tan and gray stripes.  They are a species I had written off.  The likelihood of encountering one was just too slim.  I’d have to travel to PA to find one, and even then, where would I start my search?

Luck would have it that Dr. Popescu’s new PhD student, Matt Kaunert, was beginning his project smack dab in the middle of their range.  Within an hour of our arrival in northwestern Pennsylvania, he found us three individuals (and seven eastern garters).  This was going to be a trip to remember.  Andrew Travers, Christine Hanson, and myself had traveled the five hours from Athens, Ohio to help him begin his project.  Matt was studying another rare species of herp I never imagined I would get to see: North America’s largest salamander species, the eastern hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis).

That morning, Matt had driven to check each of the creeks we were scheduled to survey, and his report didn’t look good.  It had rained the previous night, and the normally clear streams were now cloudy with sediment and debris.  Visibility would be so poor that finding the large, flat rocks hellbenders like to hide under would be next to impossible.  Even if we could stumble upon a suitable rock, the water would be too murky to see anything lurking below.  We would have to wait and hope for dry weather and check the streams again in two days.  In the meantime, we would get started on another aspect of his project: building hellbender nest boxes.  

Matt led us to his family’s campground where he was preparing for the field season.  We crept down the dirt road at 5 miles an hour and emerged into a neighborhood of little, ramshackle buildings and trailers in varying states of disrepair.  Not 200 meters from their back porches, the enormous river flowed under a skyline of forested hills.  Kayakers drifted lazily along as juvenile bald eagles soared overhead, practicing their flying.  I felt goosebumps rise on my arms at the thought of hellbenders hiding just feet below the water’s surface.  Matt’s camp was a delightful, two room trailer-mobile home hybrid, with running water, four beds, and a flat screen TV.  Out back, sat several rows of what appeared to be miniature, concrete coffins. 

Each coffin was about a meter long, with a rounded top that narrowed into an open tunnel at the base.  A removable lid provided full access to the hollow interior of the concrete box.  Placed in the appropriate streams, these baby coffins should mimic the natural rock cavities that hellbenders require to reproduce.  Matt has already completed some 60 nest boxes and hopes to nearly double that by the time he gets the go ahead to deploy them.  

Christine Hanson and Andrew Travers working on a nest box.

With the streams out of commission the following day, we got started on four new boxes.  It was taxing work—for me anyway.  Matt and Andrew are big guys, and had little trouble carrying bags of sand and concrete, shoveling the steaming mixture, and hammering out old molds.  I mostly took pictures and provided moral support.  By this point, Matt has the system down to a science, but he still showed us his first attempts—crumpled concrete heaps hidden behind the shed.  These boxes will be the first of their kind deployed in Pennsylvania, but only time will tell if they really work.  A narrow PVC pipe protruding from the rounded top allows access with a submersible camera.  With luck, we will be the first to film hellbender breeding activity in a nest box setting. 

Once the four new boxes were set, we had the rest of the day to enjoy ourselves.  We went herping of course.  The day was simply gorgeous, mid-seventies with a cool breeze and clear, blue skies; we were all itching to get on the water.  We loaded canoes and paddle boards into the truck and headed for the river.  Matt had turtles on the brain.  Spiny softshells and snappers are a common sight basking along the shore, but it takes lightning fast reflexes to catch them before they slip into the water.  I’d never herped by canoe before; it is definitely one of the more relaxing ways to seek slimy and scaly creatures.  We drifted along (I let Andrew do most of the paddling), scanning the banks for signs of turtles.  “They will look like a shiny pancake,” Matt said, referring to the spiny softshells.  Matt went into full paddle, standing on his canoe, heading for a series of rocks.  I watched as several shiny circles plopped into the stream long before Matt reached them.  Luckily, he wasn’t deterred. 

Matt has herped this river ever since he was a boy.  He knows the best spots and has encountered just about every creature that can be found here.  Where the rest of us had just seen mud, he pried an enormous snapping turtle from the muck with a grin.  He taught us how to feel for softshells with our feet and crept up sandbars on his belly—a trick to spot turtles before they disappear into the water.  As we paddled back towards camp, Matt saw something on the bank none of us had noticed.  He leapt from his canoe, clipping his eyelid on a branch, and pinned a softshell turtle in the water.  With blood streaming down his face, he lifted the struggling turtle—larger than a dinner plate—and placed it on the bank for us to photograph.

Eastern spiny softshells (Apalone spinifera) are an impressive creature.  They display all the ferocity of a snapping turtle with the agility of a frog.  They launch themselves into the water leaving nothing but a trail of sediment in their wake.  A snorkel-like snout and a serpentine neck allow them to reach the surface for air while remaining buried in the sediment.  Softshells are essentially a river turtle and can be quite common throughout Ohio and western Pennsylvania.  I had never seen one so large—having caught only young individuals on the OU campus.  

It seemed the weather was not going to cooperate for our hellbender survey.  That night, the forecast called for rain.  We tried to will the storm past, but as the winds picked up, a heavy thunderstorm swept through camp, extinguishing our electricity and with it the last of our hellbender hopes.  We went to bed with heavy hearts.

We woke late the next morning, packed our gear and headed for one of the survey streams.  Matt craned his neck to peer through the passenger window at the murky creek flowing below.  “Uh oh,” he said distantly.  Seeing my crestfallen expression, he added, “uh oh in a good way.”  The water was the color of tea, but even from the road I could see large slabs of rock resting several inches below the surface.  Despite the rains, the river had cleared significantly.  “Let’s take a drive,” Matt said with growing confidence.

Hellbender Hopes.  To be continued. . .