When I last went to work I ended up helping Chester instead of tagging fish, but I don’t mind I learned a lot of interesting things about something I never even heard of, The Piedmont Blue Burrower. This is from a poster in case you begin to wonder why my knowledge is so great about the Crayfish. “The Piedmont Blue Burrower Cambarus Harti, is a primary burrowing crayfish listed as endangered by the state of Georgia. It is distinguished by its blue coloration, small eyes and narrow areola, only found in Meriwether County Georgia”. I learned all of that when Chester showed me a poster and told me about the Blue Crayfish. We started our expedition to try and capture one of them by finding me a pair of boots so I could walk in the water without being soaked. It took a good bit of rummaging but we finally found a pair that could fit me. So I put them on then we got two cages and some fish pellets and got into a cart and drove to Chester’s location. When we got there he grabbed the traps and I grabbed the pellets and we went into the woods. When we got there Chester told me the best way to find them is to look for tiny mud chimneys that stick about a inch to two inches out of the ground. He told me the Blue Crayfish does this when burrowing or digging out his den but no one knows why whether it be protection or something to do with territory. Then he said they only live in areas were the ground is constantly soaked with water to ensure when they dig down the den will be completely filled with water since the Blue Crayfish lives completely submerged. What really interested me is the fact that so little is known about the piedmont Burrower that any live specimens help out greatly. I think its amazing luck that out of the entire planet it manages to settle down right smack dab next to the Warm Springs Regional Fisheries Center on federal land. Chester said he had managed to catch around 40 since he started looking for them, he told me over the years he has been doing this that that is not a large number of them. Once he catches one he first confirms that it is one of the endangered Piedmont Burrowers and then sends some of them to a university were they study it. One of the things they do is set up a type of ant farm for the Burrower between two panes of glass that has mud and water inside along with various plant matters. They do that so they can record the Crayfish creating a burrow in fact there is a video of one making one, you might be able to find it since Chester showed me it. So getting back to us in the woods at the stream, Chester told me that when they hear about areas with the Crayfish they go out and try the first method of harvesting. It is when they dig up the burrow and extract the crayfish to identify if it is the endangered species or not. Then the method we were going to do that day is a minnow trap in the stream with some fish pellets in it. He said this is not the usual bait he uses but hopefully it will attract them any way. Another way is to find their burrows and put a really fine mesh of string so that when it crawls out it will become tangled, so they can retrieve it and put it into a tank. So then he dug out some mud from the string and I put the bait in then he put it down so it was halfway in the water. Then when both traps were set up we walked back to the cart and Chester told me that he actually had some possible baby Piedmont Blue Burrowers in the salamander area. So he drove me down there and we went inside. He showed me the three ones he had two of them were a pinkish red and one was blue. He told me that when they are younger they had a reddish color but as they age they become the distinct cobalt blue coloration they are known for. They were really cool looking and once again amazed me that they are only found in Meriwether and no were else in the world. After I took some photos we called it a day and talked for a bit then I went home. The Photos I have in the blog were actually taken by Chester, I found them while surfing the web and thought they looked really good. Until Next time!

One image taken by chester