Nevada's Endangered Pupfish Threatened by Climate Change

Climate change and warming waters, according to a new study, threaten Nevada's endangered pupfish.

The tiny, iridescent blue fish is unique to the 426-foot-deep, water-filled cavern in the Mojave Desert on the edge of Death Valley National Park in Nevada. Where there were once more than 500 pupfish, there are now only 92, according to Nevada's Fish and Wildlife Service.

Scientists studying climate change anticipate that as Earth continues to warm, fish and wildlife will migrate away from the equator or seek higher ground for a cooler habitat.

"The catch phrase is 'Migrate, Adapt or Die,'" Mark Hausner, a hydrologist at the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas, told The Associated Press (AP).

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done for the pupfish, which only live in this "Devil's Hole" and cannot simply walk up and leave. As a result of climate change, geothermal water temperatures are rising - sometimes as high as 97 degrees - nearing the limit of what the pupfish can withstand on the shallow shelf where it breeds just below the surface.

"The water itself is warmer than the air temperature, so the air cools the water. But now that we are heating up the air, it is cooling the water less," co-author Scott Tyler, a geological science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, told the AP.

"There's no question that the temperature is going to rise and no question that the fish is going to be affected," he added.

As it is, these fish only have a lifespan of 10 to 14 months, with a 10-week hatching period. But as waters warm and make living conditions too hot for larvae to handle, this vital time period will likely be shortened to a mere eight weeks by 2050, according to the study.

Researchers with the US Geological Survey and National Park Service monitored temperature changes in the cavern's waters, and combined climate projections, water-circulation models and ecological studies to project the impact climate change could have on the pupfish.

The pupfish was declared endangered in 1967, and if climate change doesn't let up and scientists don't come up with a solution, they will likely go extinct in the near future.