Coastal Carolina killifish

Found in tidal pool behind concrete jetty, Pamlico Sound, NC. Just shy of 3" long.

Yes, 100% mummichog. These guys can really be stunners when they are colored up.

Thanks, Dustin! Say, any idea what small killi with dark vertical bars would bury itself in the sand? I saw one of the silly things a few nights ago in about 3" of water at the edge of a saltmarsh. All the other killies in the area (I didn't get a good look, they may or may not have been the same species) were dashing away from me into the marsh, but this one insisted on half-burying itself even after I nudged it out of the sand to get a better look at it.

I have seen sheepshead minnows bury in the sand like you described, but they tend towards mud flats rather than sandy areas. My guess would be striped killifish, Fundulus majalis if they looked similar to mummichogs. Those would be the two most abundant Fundulus species around.

Yeah, I agree with Dustin. I've seen both F. majalis and the very similar F. similis in the Gulf shimmy into the sand in shallow water.

the mummichog and the sheepshead are two fish on my want to keep list.

That one you caught is beautiful.

Thanks all. F. majalis looks like a good match for the fish I saw. It was definitely a Fundulus, not a sheepshead minnow. After I saw the killi burrowing, I started paying closer attention to the sand and noticed that a lot of blue crabs were pulling the same trick.

NVC- This mummichog was half dead, drifting on his side and feebly swimming when I found him. I bet he was even prettier when he was in good health.

In case any one is interested, other organisms seen near collection sites:

Mummichog site:

blue crabs
hermit crabs
fiddler crabs
shore crabs
sea slaters
grass shrimp (abundant)
oysters
mud snails
pinfish (juvenile)
lizardfish (maybe)
pipefish
Ulva and other green and brown algae abundant on rocks

striped killi site:

blue crabs (abundant)
fiddler crabs
mudsnails
squid
comb jellies
silversides

Could the fish with the vertical bars burying in the sand have been F. luciae?

http://www.nanfa.org/fif/fluciae.shtml

I don't believe so; the bars were relatively fine, there was no noticeable spot in the dorsal fin, and the fish was in an area of open sand near a marshy patch, rather than in the marsh itself. But now that I'm aware of F. luciae I'm going to try to find some!

F. luciae is unlikely to be found over sand, preferring the stinkiest, muddiest parts of the upper marsh. They also look very much like small F. heteroclitus if you don't get a good look, like being able to spot a predorsal line and the body color being a dull gunmetal gray.

Yeah, where we have caught luciae is in water that is about 1 inch deep over mud that is seemingly bottomless. They look, to me, like F. confluentus females, and can be very hard to discern from confluentus and juvenile mummichogs. They are small fish as well rarely getting to 2 inches. Luciae is a rare fish up this way, tough this could be due to its very difficult to sample habitat.

I went back to the F. majalis spot and caught some striped females as well as the barred males. No question now that they are majalis. Also caught some mummichogs, sheepshead minnows, silversides, and pinfish, and saw but did not catch some flounder and a juvenile pipefish.

It was interesting seeing the microhabitat choice differences; the fish all seemed quite specific. Mummies and pinfish were only along vegetated margins (mummies hard against the bank or in the grass, pinfish a few inches or feet away from the bank), sheepsheads in very shallow margins with mussels and other structure (but not much vegetation), flounder on open sand bottoms, striped topminnows in both sheepshead and flounder territory (and far more abundant than either). Silversides and blue crabs were in all microhabitats. I even saw some small blue crabs ambling above the water line in the grasses, as well as the more typically terrestrial crabs that I call "shore crabs". These are small, dark brown, and shaped like fiddler crabs but lack the assymetrical claws.

Dunno where you're at in Pamlico Sound, but the F. luciae records in Menhinick (1991) are all south of Ocracoke. F. confluentus and Lucania parva could be there too, and F. diaphanus in low salinity on the mainland side. Silversides could include, Atlantic, inland and rough.

It was interesting seeing the microhabitat choice differences;

Beside the obvious preferences - flounder on sand - most of those species lives' are determined by which predator and how many are nearby. Any or all of those can turn up in many diverse places, including up on the dry sand when the bluefish raid the shallows.

I'm on Ocracoke. I'm still going to look for F. luciae- you never know! I may also get a chance to sample on Portsmouth Island just to the south. Do sailfin mollies get this far north? Fishbase says Cape Fear drainage and southward, but they've been wrong before. There's a tidal creek choked with Chara that I want to hit; if I were a molly I'd hang out there.

The best places to find F. luciae are ones with deep loose mud that you might not want to walk into without waders. Scoop the liquid mud in a net and dump it out on a more solid surface, and see if you can find the fish wiggling about. If there's no shininess to the fish, it's a good chance you've found spotfins.

Nate, no ghost crabs? Aren't you doing any night driving? Green tree frogs and [I think, not membering good] spadefoots as well huge ghost crabs were all over the road at the marshy end of the island. Fog alone seemed to move them but a rainy night was swarming. The tree frogs in the roadside marsh had overlapping territory with the ghost crabs from the sound's edge.
For some reason I found that juxtaposition to be particularly cool.

I've seen ghost crabs on the ocean side, but not on the sound side. I've seen and heard a few green treefrogs, but squirrel treefrogs are much more prevalent here in the village. Other herps seen so far include:

southern leopard frogs- several juveniles seen on road in piney woods near creek
diamondback terrapin- abundant in creeks and marshy ditches
eastern mud turtle- abundant in and around freshwater ditches
common snapping turtle- two seen in or near freshwater ditches
yellowbelly slider- one seen near creek
black racer- two seen near creek
Carolina watersnake- one seen in freshwater ditch
green anoles- abundant in fern glades and shrubs away from shore, and in village
six-lined racerunners- two seen in sparsely vegetated areas near shore (dune area and just above tidal marsh)

Lots of other cool stuff here. The insect fauna is rather different from middle Tennessee, especially orthopterans. I'm trying to get a handle on the marine molluscs. Lots of seabirds and shorebirds, of course. Fish crows instead of American crows. Brown pelicans instead of white. Relatively few raptors and no vultures. The village is overrun with half-tame mallards and half-feral cats, which is resulting in steadily diminishing broods of mallard chicks.

Of course the flora is much different- relatively low habitat and species diversity compared to home, but little overlap beyond loblolly pine, poison ivy, the occasional mulberry, and a few ubiquitous ruderals. The sclerophyllous scrub and forest, and the blackrush-dominated grasslands, have a very foreign aspect to my eye. Even the lawn weeds look peculiar, with pennyworts, sedges, and seedboxes being more common than clovers and crabgrass; I don't think I've seen a single dandelion here. It's also quite startling to see saw palmettos and tall-trunked yuccas growing in the woods.

I collected what I believe is horned pondweed (Zannichiella) in a tidal-influenced ditch in the village. I hope to get it to grow, as well as some other brackish flora. There are precious few brackish plants available in the pet and garden trades, so if I hope to have a planted brackish tank it'll have to be wild-stocked. Some of the brackish algae are quite pretty; the "gardens" of green and brown algae that grow on the concrete jetties are beautiful. I'd love to be able to reproduce that in a tank.

I'm on Ocracoke. I'm still going to look for F. luciae- you never know! I may also get a chance to sample on Portsmouth Island just to the south. Do sailfin mollies get this far north? Fishbase says Cape Fear drainage and southward, but they've been wrong before. There's a tidal creek choked with Chara that I want to hit; if I were a molly I'd hang out there.

The closest mollie site to you is on the backside of Topsail Island, way to the south of you. They are patchy and uncommon in southern NC. Even my guaranteed spot in wilmington doesn't always produce

Thanks, Fritz. I guess the mollies will have to wait!

I haven't managed to go out looking for F. luciae yet, but I did have a semi-successful search for seagrass beds. I waded across a level sandy submersed flat on the sound side of the island; it extended several hundred yards from shore at least. A handful of open-topped duck blinds were placed on posts out on the sand flat. The water was about 8" deep when I started wading, 12" when I got back to shore. I never reached a drop-off or sloping area; I had to turn around when the sun started setting.

There were lots of patches of a small, sparse seagrass--I think it was widgeongrass (Ruppia maritima), but I didn't want to pull any up for a closer look--and lots of floating, broken-off or uprooted pieces of turtlegrass (Zostera marina). I put a few root-intact pieces of Zostera in a bag and am going to plant them in a tub and see what happens. I didn't find any Zostera growing in the substrate. I saw various small fishes but couldn't get a good enough look to even guess what they might have been. There were also lots of blue and hermit crabs, and a fair number of live clams and scallops, visible in both the widgeongrass beds and the open sandy spaces. I want to go back with a net and more daylight to burn.