Video
Fish of Zion
Transcript
Hi everyone I'm Ranger Sofia and today I'm going to talk to you about how Zion's four native fish species are perfectly adapted to the Virgin River. So today you can see that I'm next to the burbling Virgin River behind me you can see the walls of Zion canyon including the Sentinel which is one of our rock formations here. So looking at this river you might think huh, I think that's a perfect place for fish to live. It's clear it's calm but, think again. In Zion we actually get violent flash floods. These usually occur in July and August which is our monsoon season but can happen anytime we get large amounts of rain. To demonstrate what that's like I want you to look at this picture here. So if you look at this you'll see that like today this river is nice and calm and clear and moving very slowly. But when we get lots of rain in just a matter of minutes bam! The river can look like this. A whole wall of sticks and rocks and boulders and mud coming down at you. So if you were a fish do you think this would be an easy place to live? I don't think so. Luckily though we have four resilient fish species that actually live in Zion National Park in this Virgin River. The first kind are called suckers. They have this very dramatic mouth like you can see in this picture that I'm holding here they use that big mouth to suction up different foods and things on the bottom of our river. So the first type is this guy here this is the flannel mouth sucker. In this drawing I'm holding you can see that's a bit green in color. And then our other sucker fish is this guy here called the desert sucker and this one as you can see in the drawing is a bit more brown and a little bit smaller than the flannelmouth sucker. Our final two fish are both in the minnow family. The first one is this this is the speckled dace you can see in the drawing there are speckles on it. It is never quite this large but I've blown it up so you can see it better. And then our very final fish in our is called the Virgin River spinedace it is silvery with a little bit of copper on top as you can see in the drawing here. And it is actually endemic to Zion National Park which means it can't be found anywhere else in the world which I think is quite special. But how do these four fish survive in the turbulent Virgin River? How have they adapted? So first of all I want you to look at this picture I'm holding here and notice the shape of the fish. What about that long shape might help them survive in this environment? If you're with a friend go ahead and pause the video and discuss your answer. So if you look closely at this you'll see that they're kind of shaped like a torpedo, maybe like the ones that you throw in the swimming pool that go really far. And that makes them very aerodynamic or in this case hydrodynamic, which means they can move very quickly and easily through those violent floods that we might have sometimes. Now let's look at our second attribute so if you look at this picture I'm holding here it's a picture of the fins you'll notice they're all very wide and broad and large. So how might that help them? So again go ahead and pause and think about it. So these guys are kind of like flippers. If you've ever gone snorkeling or put flippers on in the swimming pool those flippers make you go much faster and that's just the same thing with the fish. With these big wide broad fins they can navigate the river much more easily to get away from those flash floods and find a hiding spot. Our final adaptation, you can see in this picture here, is focusing on the colors of the fish. You'll notice that all of them are kind of a darker brown color on top and lighter on bottom. How might that help them? Go ahead and pause that video one last time. So I want you to imagine that you are a red-tailed hawk and you are flying over the virgin river during one of those muddy flash flood days and you look down do you think you can spot these fish? Nope they are perfectly camouflaged. So as you can see our four native fish have been perfectly adapted to this Virgin River and all of its natural flow. This is their home. We can help protect their home by making sure we do not go to the bathroom in our river here and keep all of our trash out of the water. I hope that one day you come to visit us in Zion and if you want to see these really cool fish I recommend you walk either the Riverside Walk or even hike in the Narrows and you might see some of these fish swimming along thanks for joining me.
Description
Learn all about the fish that call the Virgin River home along with Ranger Sofia. While Zion's iconic river is known for its flash floods, four very special fish have adapted to survive and thrive in these waters. These four fish are perfectly adapted to the Virgin River’s natural turbulence. This program is designed for fourth grade students, but can be enjoyed by all. Standards addressed: NGSS: 4-LS1-1, Utah SEEd: 4.1.1
Duration
4 minutes, 44 seconds
Copyright and Usage Info