I was lucky enough to spend yesterday surveying the fish of Coon Creek, Alabama, in Jackson County in the N.E. corner of the state. This on a ~500 acre parcel of land that the State Lands Division has recently acquired. The area's of interest because of relatively unspoiled natural beauty, with the creek rushing off the western slope of Sand Mountain. Now that the property's gated, ATV traffic has disappeared and the remaining beer can empties are beginning to age(!).

The local state land steward, Nick Sharp, has been doing a low-intensity bioblitz to inventory the property. A state botanist was by earlier in the week, and as we arrived several groups of terrestrial ecologists/herpers were leaving. The hope was that this creek had hellbenders, but none were found over a 24 hour search of likely habitat. I showed up with two of my more adventurous students to check out the local fish. This property has one odd quirk; the only legal way in for most people would be by boat up lower Coon Creek from the Tennessee, since the property is an "island" with no legal right-of-way access. We got in with permission from a private landowner who has given Nick a gate key, and from there the road crosses TVA land that is more-or-less public. The road is only for ATVs or 4WD trucks; it was used as a timber road, and has gotten worse since. Luckily my truck made it in and out in one piece.

The primary site we sampled is a series of deep pools separated by riffles that shade in to small waterfalls. The challenge was the substrate: most of it is bowling-ball sized chunks of sandstone that are smoothed by the high water flow typical of the site, covered with one of the healthiest growths of brown diatoms I've seen. This makes the bottom extremely slippery with no flat surfaces. The water was extremely clear, to the point it was easy to step suddenly in neck-deep water without thinking because the bottom was so vivid from the clarity. Our seining method quickly became having two snorkelers chase fish into the net held by two people, with a fifth person to help pull up the net.

The fish fauna was limited but interesting. Because it drains Sand Mountain, really a steep sided plateau topped by ancient seafloor with low fish diversity in its creeks, I'd guess that Coon Creek's diversity is low because it drains a low diversity area. And like I said before, it's typically a high-gradient flow. Because of our intense drought locally the water was tame. But there was obvious evidence along the banks of heavier and more violent flow.

The fish we netted or observed:
Spotted bass
Redbreast sunfish
Bluegill sunfish
Spotted gar
Mottled sculpin
Logperch (but no blotchside...)
Rainbow darter
Black snubnose
Tennessee snubnose
Stoneroller
Whitetail shiner
Yellow bullhead
Northern hogsucker

The dominant fish were redbreast sunfish and large schools of spotted bass YOY. The deeper pools were loaded with logperch and whitetail shiner. The riffle areas had high populations of Tennessee snubnose, while the only black snubnose we found was in a small tributary spring run from Saltpetre Cave (along with the sculpins). It was odd netting in a creek without large numbers of smaller minnows such as scarlet shiners and striped shiners, but I'm sure they weren't present.

We didn't have time to sample some other areas of this creek, along with some other smaller creeks. I was hoping to find flame chubs, of course, but we didn't really find suitable habitat.

Here's a picture of our starting point. Notice the well-rounded stones.

Sounds like a good time, though flame chubs would have been a really surprising find. That's certainly not a very groundwater-influenced system...

A species list like that really makes you really wonder why most of the southern tribs to the southern bend of the Tennessee have such a depauperate fauna compared to those coming in from the north... Is it entirely gradient-driven (and if so, why are things like gar and logperch able to make it up)? The only southern tribs that have high diversity are on the margins of the bend (Bear Creek to the west and Chickamauga Creek to the east), but are also larger systems suggesting an effect of drainage area.

Also, why no banded sculpins, otherwise nearly ubiquitous across the middle Tennessee drainage?! There's an odd gap in their distribution along the flanks of Sand Mountain, and appears to be some really weird stuff going on with habitat partitioning (carolinae vs bairdii) and micro-distribution based on underlying geology on the Cumberland Plateau. Would be a really cool thing to approach from a GIS perspective...

cheers,
Dave

Dave, I was thinking of you with the sculpins we found. If it's any interest to you I'll send the two of them to you.

And you're right about the weird diversity distribution. I didn't really expect to find flame chubs, but I was tweaked because it's not that far to the east of where I've found them (Eudy Cave and Little Paint Rock Creek in Marshall County). It's a little odd that we didn't find any killifish, among others. A GIS approach could be useful; is it geology, type of forest cover, or is it just a series of chance events? Sand Mountain is an unusual place in a lot of ways (e.g., the book Salvation On Sand Mountain).

Anyway, I hope to go back at some point and poke around other sites on the property.

I'd be interested in seeing them; the only other museum specimens I know of from that system are relatively old, faded, and poorly preserved. Thanks much.

Yeah, you never know what you might find, especially if you're not out there looking. Even by the time Bo's Alabama book came out, nobody had sampled South Sauty Creek for fishes (or at least nobody had put any voucher specimens in museums). Not sure that anybody has done so since...

At any rate, I really like that part of Alabama; some of the most spectacular scenery, low population density, and if you don't mind the snake-handling religious wackos, it's a neat place to play.

cheers,
Dave