Anna Rumer

The Desert Sun

More than 500 feet below the northwest part of Nevada's share of Death Valley National Park, the bottom of Devils Hole remains untouched by man.

A relic of an ancient sea in one of the world's driest places, this gaping crack in the earth's crust is a window into the aquifer and may be the deepest underwater cave in the country.

With its crystalline water, uncharted floor and fiendish name, Devils Hole has always carried a sense of mystique. Cult leader Charles Manson reportedly believed the hole was the entrance to the underworld, while the Timbisha Shoshone people of Death Valley once warned children not to dwell there, lest they be taken by "water babies."

But more than the inspiration for lore, Devils Hole is home to some of the most endangered fish in the world and the possibility of scientific discovery.

Devils Hole pupfish populations have dropped dramatically over the years -- from a high of 400-500 fish in 1996 to a low of 35 in 2013 -- but these little fish are making a comeback, scientists say. With this comeback comes the potential to reveal secrets of the genome and the far-reaching effects of our influence on the world, but did the pupfish hold up over a tough summer of flooding?

The Devils Hole pupfish may be tiny, with males reaching about an inch long in maturity, but they're a huge part of an environment unlike any other.

A geothermal pool reaching unknown depths into the lower carbonate aquifer, Devils Hole is an anomaly due to its oxygen-deprived waters that stay consistently at 93 degrees regardless of season. It's also known to be remarkably sensitive, with earthquakes as far away as Japan, Indonesia and Chile registering with small amounts of activity within the hole.

Dr. Kevin Wilson, an aquatic ecologist with the National Park Service in Nevada, has been studying Devils Hole for years, orchestrating biannual scuba dives with the help of other government biologists and a team of dive experts from the Coachella Valley to count the Devils Hole pupfish and observe changes in their environment.

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Despite Devils Hole's small size, Wilson said there is great value in observing a system that can be essentially closed off from the world while providing so much information about the underlying aquifer.

Likewise, the endangered Devils Hole pupfish are decidedly unique. While other species of pupfish exist within Death Valley National Park, those that live in Devils Hole are believed to be some of the oldest pupfish in the region and are also the only ones that lack pelvic fins.

With such high temperatures and low oxygen levels, Wilson said the fish conserve their energy for necessities such as reproduction partially by not developing the fins, which are believed to help other fish with balance.

The Devils Hole pupfish were first discovered in 1890, but only noticed as a divergent species from other pupfish 40 years later. Research differs on how long the species has been around -- traditional knowledge suggests they emerged between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago, while a study published in 2014 by "Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences" hypothesizes that such a small vertebrate population could only have come into existence about 360 years ago.

Even at their small size, pupfish are Devils Hole's largest residents, living alongside about 80 species of algae, and about a dozen invertebrate species such as beetles, snails and worms.

With Devils Hole pupfish populations sinking to worrisome numbers -- only 35 were counted in 2013 -- scientists have taken measures to ensure the species isn't completely wiped out.

In the 1990s, a refuge population was established in Ash Meadows, where a small population of Devils Hole pupfish were introduced as an insurance policy for the species. However, the population was contaminated in the mid-200s when another kind of pupfish made its way into the refuge, breeding with the Devils Hole fish and resulting in a kind of hybrid pupfish. In 2013, scientists hatched Devils Hole pupfish eggs in the Ash Meadows Fish Conservation Facility and have so far seen some level of reproduction, which Wilson considers encouraging.

A separate refuge population has also raised some questions about the genetics of the Devils Hole pupfish, said Dr. Stan Hillyard, a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas who has been diving in Devils Hole and studying the pupfish for 40 years.

Hillyard points to the morphological differences in the refuge fish, which have been recorded as having smaller heads and larger, deeper bodies than those in Devils Hole.

"They look like totally different fish," he said.

Hillyard thinks it may all come down to epigenetics, or the expression of genes that already exist within a species changing due to their environment.

If there are different interactions within a number of signaling molecules in an animal's genome, he explains, different characteristics can emerge even among members of the same species. Much of this is hereditary, he adds, and is the reason why all humans look different from one another.

He notes that when researchers attempted to raise a different species of pupfish at temperatures closer to those of Devils Hole with limited food, the fish began to look more like the Devils Hole pupfish.

"Basically what that says is you can have external factors affect the expression of genes," he explained.

But with a population that's never been recorded at more than 500, why is there so much effort, care and funding being devoted to the Devils Hole pupfish?

"It's a philosophical question in some ways," Wilson said. "Society has to make a decision: What species do we conserve or try to recover and which do we not? ... We're influencing (the ecosystem) so we have the responsibility as a society to say, 'Hey, we’ve kind of been mucking things up, let's try and do something to conserve them.' "

There's also a scientific way of looking at this, he argues. How do these fish live in this kind of inhospitable water? How can this population signal larger changes as temperatures across the world rise to historic levels?

"Essentially, it's a bellwether or a canary in a coal mine," he said. "This system being so warm might possibly help us understand what might happen to other desert springs here in Ash Meadows or in other arid environments around the world."

The Devils Hole pupfish have faced challenges both natural and manmade over the past several decades, the effect of which can be seen in their fluctuating numbers, which have varied wildly since the late 1960s, when advocates took the pupfishes' plight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1967, a cattle ranch owned by the Cappaert family purchased 12,000 acres of land in Ash Meadows, setting up a large-capacity well near what was then Death Valley National Monument, close to Devils Hole. As the well pumped, groundwater levels fell within Devils Hole, reaching almost 5 feet beneath historic levels by 1970, according to court documents.

"Once that well was turned on and someone was sucking on the straw ... the levels declined," Hillyard said.

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The shelf on which the pupfish depend for much of their food and spawning was dangerously close to becoming fully exposed to the air, which could have marked the end of the ancient fish if it weren't for the Desert Fishes Council and the Desert Pupfish Task Force. The two groups argued the ranchers didn't have senior water rights to the aquifer sitting beneath their land and that further pumping at that level would mean the demise of the fish, which were listed as an endangered species in 1967.

In 1971, a federal court issued an injunction for the ranch to stop all pumping from the aquifer; in 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Cappaert v. United States that the pupfish and Devils Hole had prior water rights due to being part of a national monument.

"The Presidential Proclamation of January 7, 1952, which withdrew the Devils Hole pool from the public domain, implicitly reserved enough groundwater to sustain the unique pupfish and legally established the government's rights as against any future appropriation," the Supreme Court ruled.

While pumping was quelled, Wilson said the hole's water is still about a foot below historic levels, which you can see in the eroded ridges of the cave's rock walls. Pupfish counts didn't begin until 1972, when the pumping injunction had already taken effect, so it is difficult to see empirically how the population was affected by the pumping. However, while about 550 fish were observed in the first year's count, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data shows the population soon shrank to a stable average of 324 fish from the late 1970s until 1996.

"There is still that human impact on the ecosystem," Wilson said.

In the summer of 2004, the fish faced another blow to their population when a flash flood pushed a number of scientific traps from the edge of Devils Hole into the water. The traps, which were used by university researchers funded in part by the National Park Service to observe the growth of baby pupfish, trapped and killed about a third of the population at the time, Wilson said.

Aside from the tragic accident, Hillyard said the population was already beginning to decline on its own -- from 275 fish in 1997 to 171 before the incident in 2004.

"That was a kind of disaster with the ones that got trapped in the larval traps," he said, "but if you look ... the slope of the decline was already there."

Devils Hole was once again thrust into the news in May, when three Nevada men on a drunken spree were accused of taking a naked dip in the delicate ecosystem, leaving behind beer cans and vomit.

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At least one pupfish was killed during the skinny-dip, according to the National Park Service prior to the arrest of three suspects who have been charged with killing an endangered species, damage to a habitat, trespassing, conspiracy to commit a crime and destruction of property.

The rains of October 2015 and June 2016, which flooded the park and swept several cubic meters of debris onto the shallow shelf, could also have affected the population adversely.

The pupfish also face threats within their own ecosystem due in part to a change in their food source and some vicious new neighbors.

In spring 2006, scientists found 38 fish during their dives, which was the smallest population ever recorded at the time. Seven years later, that unsettling record was broken when scientists counted only 35 fish.

The population rebounded to 116 come spring of 2016, but Wilson thinks the decline is in part due to a newly dominant kind of algae that generates less oxygen and makes for worse food that became more prominent in the hole around the time of the drop. Currently, scientists are measuring oxygen levels within the Devils Hole waters to learn more about the algal effects and predict more about the fish's metabolism, he added.

National Parks Service biotechnician Jeff Goldstein suspects the population drop also has something to do with the presence of a new predaceous diving beetle within Devils Hole that has been observed eating eggs and smaller fish.

Biologists first started seeing the beetles in the surrounding area in 2000, he said, but haven't determined why they've made the move into the hole itself recently.

The rising temperatures associated with global climate change also worry the biologists. Pupfish and other Devils Hole species have come to depend on the near-constant temperature of the water, which remains around 93 degrees regardless of season. With greater solar radiation, however, Hillyard said temperatures at the peak of the day could reach upwards of 100 degrees on the ledge of the hole, which would influence the fishes' food source and reproduction cycle.

"A simple answer is climate change might reduce the time in the spring when water temperatures are not elevated and there's more food available," Hillyard said. "If you're already at 93 degrees Fahrenheit ... that little increase can push a population over the edge."

It's just after 4 a.m. Sept. 24 in Pahrump, Nev., and the Devils Hole Dive Team is guzzling too much coffee inside the Golden Nugget Casino -- one of the only places in this desert town with a kitchen open that time of morning.

It's almost time to embark on the fall count of Devils Hole pupfish, a weekend full of six dives and 10 separate counts. It will be the first glimpse at the pupfish population after two floods and a drunken trio, and no one is sure what they might see when they sink beneath the surface of Devils Hole.

The team consists of six men: Wilson, Goldstein and Hillyard with the National Park Service and Tom Jaskulski, Peter Garcia and Steve Cane, three Palm Springs area divers who volunteer as a kind of scuba body guard while the scientists concentrate on making an accurate count.

They've been meeting in Pahrump, the closest point of civilization to Devils Hole, twice a year for decades, and have hundreds of dives in Devils Hole among them.

The group has history: Hillyard was Goldstein's professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Jaskulski's signature is on both Garcia's and Cane's certification for cave diving.

They have to be this close. The dive into Devils Hole is complex, with the team descending as deep as 120 feet with 70 pounds of gear for about an hour.

The water is gin clear -- a person leaning over the hole can be identified by divers almost 100 feet down -- but pass Anvil Rock at 75 feet and you're swimming in complete darkness.

"You can't see anything at all," Goldstein said. "That's when you're in a true cave."

Devils Hole isn't without its victims either. In 1965, two Las Vegas skin divers went missing in Devils Hole and have never been found, according to The Tuscaloosa News archives.

Divers also have to maximize their power without much kicking in order to avoid kicking up silt or disturbing the fish and algae that clings to the west wall of the cave.

"It's almost like rock climbing," Garcia said. "We know where the handholds are and so we just climb up with no kicking."

Jaskulski was the first of the Palm Springs divers to get involved with Devils Hole. A distinguished diver, Jaskulski was called in by the National Park Service 23 years ago to shoot underwater video of the pupfish. Other than Hillyard, he estimates he may now have the highest number of dives into Devils Hole of anyone, and actively recruits other talented divers from his classes to volunteer at Devils Hole.

As the biologists make their count, their individual dive partner will monitor their equipment and their behavior, making sure there are no signs of malfunction or distress. An additional person monitors the dive from rocks surrounding the hole's opening.

"They do their work and our job is in case anything goes wrong," Jaskulski said. "The biggest thing is keeping everyone safe and making sure no one injures or endangers the fish."

Five miles off the paved road toward the desert center, the dive team unloads three trucks full of equipment in the shadow of the massive barbed-wire fence that signals the entrance to Devils Hole.

Over the clanging of oxygen tanks, Hillyard reminisces about his first dive four decades ago. Then, he says, there were only three people per trip, and they had to carry all their equipment piece by piece down a wooden ladder with a broken rung. Now, the team has the help of a metal staircase when dragging their dive kits up and down the craggy path into the hole's opening as well as a portable dive platform.

They'll do three dives today -- two counts by divers and one with a stereo video rig -- as well as two surface counts done with the help of employees with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They'll do the same tomorrow.

At 8:21 a.m., Hillyard, Jaskulski, Cane and Wilson disappear beneath the surface of Devils Hole for the first dive of the day. As they submerge, Garcia shouts one last safety tip: "Plan to dive and dive to plan!"

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Within minutes, three men move to crouch on the dive platform for the first surface count, intently accounting for the pupfish on the shelf of Devils Hole.

Beneath the surface, Hillyard and Wilson use their waterproof tablets to mark down the pupfish they see at different depths of the cave. Sorting them by size, it's easier not to double count a fish, but if they do, there's always the other dives and the stereo camera footage to help even out the average.

"You'll see the fish darting in and out," Hillyard said before the first dive. "You just develop a picture of where a fish should be and sometimes they're there and sometimes they're not."

At 9 a.m., the divers emerge, having gone down as deep as 112 feet into the cave. Climbing out of the water, Wilson shouts that he saw 115 pupfish swimming around Devils Hole -- 62 on the third level alone. Along with the surface count, 136 fish were seen.

"I think we can keep our day jobs," he says, grinning from ear to ear.

Hillyard notes that the visibility is the worst he's ever seen it during a dive, attributing the murky water to the June flood that washed debris and calcium carbonate into the hole, but that the fish look bigger and healthier "like they did in the good old days."

The second dive confirmed the initial count, when divers spotted an average of 112 pupfish -- 151 with the surface count.

"You can't make this up!" Wilson said, beaming.

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By the end of the dives, the biologists determined the official observable population to be about 144 fish -- just slightly higher than last fall's count of 131 fish.

Wilson said pupfish numbers are good, and suggests the species may be at its carrying capacity under current conditions.

"That tells us the population is increasing slowly, but we're concerned because we're still beneath historic levels (of 400-500 fish)," he said. "We're still trying to figure out what's going on. ... We're cautiously optimistic."

Anna Rumer is a reporter covering the Eastern Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun. She can be reached at (760) 285-5490, anna.rumer@desertsun.com or on Twitter @AnnaRumer.