In search of the elusive mudpuppy

GUTTENBERG - I'm claiming the state mudpuppy record until someone comes along with one better than the 17-incher I pulled from a trap on Nov. 18.

Of course, the actual credit goes not to the journalist who merely lifted the trap from the murky depths of the Mississippi River but to the scientist who set the trap, Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist Kevin Hanson, who is researching the secret lifestyles of the slippery, seldom-seen salamanders.

The DNR, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Minnesota herpetologist Jeff LeClere, is in the second year of a study of the mudpuppy, a protected species considered threatened in Iowa.

Hanson invited me to accompany him recently when he checked his traps - a privilege that allowed me to enter the select circle of Iowans who have ever seen one of the dragon-headed creatures with undulating crimson external gills.

To ensure I would get to see a mudpuppy, Hanson took me to his 'honey hole,” a 35-foot-deep backwater area that seems to be mudpuppy central.

Each of the six traps we checked contained at least one mudpuppy; the six together held 12; and one of them constituted Hanson's first fourfer - four pups in a single trap.

To collect specimens for study, Hanson sinks wire traps baited with minnows to the bottom of pool 11. An unobtrusive float attached to a string marks the locations of the traps.

Each captured mudpuppy is weighed and measured, and its sex is determined. Hanson then snips off a bit of skin for genetic analysis and implants a tiny electronic tag that is to, with future recaptures, help determine mudpuppy movements and rates of growth.

'We want to find out the abundance and health of the population, their habitat preferences and whether they need any help from us,” said Hanson, who conducts his research in late fall and early winter, when mudpuppies are most active.

With the wind approaching gale force in the afternoon, I bailed on Hanson, leaving him alone to battle heavy seas as he checked additional traps.

He later reported catching his first mudpuppy at the site of a 2008 train derailment that fouled the water in Bluff Slough.

Ironically, the mudpuppy research is funded by a portion of a settlement with the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which in 2014 agreed to pay $625,000 to mitigate environmental damage caused in July 2008 when four diesel locomotives plunged into the Mississippi River near Guttenberg.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad is the parent company of the Dakota Minnesota and Eastern Railroad train that derailed when a boulder dislodged by heavy rains tore up a section of the track near the river about two miles south of Guttenberg.

Four diesel locomotives tumbled into Bluff Slough, where they leaked an estimated 4,400 gallons of diesel fuel before the last of them was removed a week later.