An earthquake 500 miles away shakes up a rare fish species

Though California may not have seen a tsunami after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook the northern part of the state in early December, the rarest fish in the world felt their own little tsunami in their remote, cavern home.

The National Park Service said the earthquake sent waves 500 miles away to Devils Hole, a secluded cave 88 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the endangered Devils Hole pupfish resides.

Devils Hole is located 30 miles northwest of Pahrump, in Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge, which is part of Death Valley National Park, and normally has completely still water that is shielded from wind due to its depth, according to the park service.

On Thursday, December 5, just two minutes after the earthquake struck, the cave saw 2-foot tall waves that disrupted the pupfish’s primary spawning area and swept “organic matter from the (spawning area) shelf into the cavern, which is over 500 feet deep,” Abby Wines, spokesperson for Death Valley, said in a news release.

National Park Service biologist Kevin Wilson said the waves will have mixed effects for the 212 fish that call Devils Hole home.

“In the short term, this is bad for the pupfish,” Wilson said in a statement. “A lot of pupfish food just sank deeper into the cave, most likely too deep for the fish to get to it. There were likely pupfish eggs on the shelf that were destroyed. But, in the long term, this type of reset is good for the pupfish. It cleaned off any decaying organic matter that could otherwise cause pockets of low oxygen.”

Wilson said that the park service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nevada Department of Wildlife are working to mitigate the disruption on the fish, and will likely increase the amount of supplemental food given to the fish.

Contact Taylor Lane at tlane@reviewjournal.com.