Fish in the Desert

Most photos and descriptions dwell on the extreme conditions in Death Valley. It averages only 2 inches of rain each year. It can freeze at night in winter and the summer temperatures frequently top 120F (49C). It holds the world record high of 134F (57C). You would expect wildlife to be virtually non-existent.

Surprisingly, there’s a great variety. Wildlife learned to adapt and also to benefit from man’s intervention in the valley. There is even one variety of fish left from the giant lake that filled the valley 10,000 years ago. The pupfish lives, impossibly, in these highly salty rivulets. 

The fish is about an inch long and looks like this. The water is teeming with them when you peer into the streams.

We were here on a ranger led activity, and he took us along the boardwalk, following the stream towards the source where the pupfish population must migrate to endure the scorching summer heat. The lower water course dries up and some fish don’t make it. The ranger also explained other aspects of this environment, for example how some of the plants in the photo deal with the excess salt by storing it in special leaves.

There are four pupfish species in separate locations in different parts of the valley. One of these species lives in a deep natural well, also used by locals for irrigation, and is nearly extinct. To put it bluntly, these fish have nearly had their chips.

A protection order was recently placed on the well so the locals were forbidden to use it. Their response to the plight of the pupfish was to throw old car batteries into the well. Finish them off and we get our water back.

There are two sides to most things, and the locals would understandably see their livelihoods as more important than a few insignificant minnow sized fish. The well is now securely fenced off. Anyone need some old car batteries?