Rare Devils Hole Pupfish Are Masters of Survival
Devils Hole is a deep geothermal pool located in the Nevada portion of Death Valley National Park, and the only place on Earth where you can find Devils Hole pupfish. This resilient species (Cyprinodon diabolis) were likely trapped in the unique geological/aquatic formation thousands of years ago and, against all odds, have survived.
Every year the National Park Service does a head count of the inch-long, critically endangered iridescent blue (or green) fish. This year and last they’ve noted 175 individuals, a tiny population hanging on by a thread, but well up from their historic low of just 35 fish in 2013.
“Times are good now with Devils Hole pupfish, compared to how they've been in the past,” fish biologist Jenny Gumm told NPR this week. Scientists are baffled by their recovery, in fact are baffled how this little fish manages to hang on in this most hostile environment.
The Hole is small but deep, at least 430 feet deep – though divers have not plumbed to the bottom so who knows how far that is. It’s hot, averaging around 93° F at the surface, where the pupfish live. It is in complete shadow for four months every winter, so the tiny plants the pupfish feed on are sparse.
And it is subject to occasional cataclysm – like the rare flash flood that dumped muddy water into the Hole in 2021. Or the mini-tsunamis that swish through the Hole when there’s an earthquake, like the 7.1-magnitude that rocked the place in 2019.
“Large earthquakes as far away as Japan, Indonesia and Chile have caused the water to 'slosh' in Devils Hole like water in a bathtub,” says the NPS website. “Waves may splash as high as two meters up the walls, sweeping clean the shallow shelf so important to the pupfish.”
Unlike with other endangered species around the world, there’s not much humans can do, policy-wise, to protect pupfish. We can only leave them alone and observe their incredible resilience.
“The question that I receive and my colleagues receive is, ‘Why?’ And you know, we're trying to answer that,” says Kevin Wilson, an aquatic ecologist at the NPS.
The NPS pupfish cam captured the turbulence of the 2019 tsunami.
Photo credit: Olin Feuerbacher / NPS
