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Fish are also part of nature, but most of the time we don't interact with them.  Sometimes, I've been surprised by very interesting fish doing very interesting things, and I'm
gathering them on this page. Sharks are fish, of course, but they are in a different group. Fish on these pages are defined by having a skeleton composed of rigid bone. 
Sharks and their relatives have skeletons made of cartilage. I've put them on a different page. Gars also have a different page.

03/06/2021   I visited Fiorenza Park North to get more images to document the "fish kill" from the Big Freeze of Feb.14-20, 2021.  I was also hoping to find the "eel" carcass
I mentioned in a previous post but it was gone.  The images below were taken along a 200-foot(approximately) long stretch of shorline on the North edge of the South lake
at the park. Try this link and it should show a Google map view of the area. Google Map Link.    Most (if not all) of the carcasses seem to be of armored catfish (Loricariids) of various sizes.
Since they are of various sizes, I believe that this show that mostly these species were affected, and that this isn't some kind of arrangement caused by size. On the other hand,
other carcasses might have been easier to consume than these armored ones, so might have been carried off. I believe I've seen live examples of Hypostomus plecostomus and
Pterygoplichthys anisitsi at this park, so the carcasses could be at least one of those.  Clicking on an image will open it larger in a new window.

    
        Carcass by my size-11 foot                                                                                                                                                   Black Vultures still picked at the carcasses.         

    
   B.Vulture (Coragyps atratus) in a pile.                                                                                    Closer view of one pile.          

  
   Stitched panorama of close view of one pile.

   
  I shot these four progressive views to capture the extend of the carcass field--and this was just one part of the coverage.

 
                                                                      This is a camera-built panorama just a bit further West. Fish carcasses were scattered everywhere.

03/04/2021   I visited Fiorenza Park North again, It's not too far from home.  I'm not sure, but I think the water level has dropped since my last visit.
Today, I discovered that the armored catfish (various species?) apparently did not come through the freeze even unscathed.  There were many dead ones
scattered around the shoreline.  There were many different sizes.  Maybe they had died during the freeze but their carcasses had been hidden by deeper water.
They were certainly visible today!  

    
             5 in this picture.                                        Two of those 5, closer.                                At least 10 in this picture.                     A closer view, some are submerged.           

    
          And there are more.                            I couldn't get closer to these big ones.        Two more, and something very interesting!         
I noticed the uncommon carcass floating near the bank. I was able to get it on land, and I took photos of it.  I could think of two "tube-shaped" animals
that it might have been.  One is an amphibian, and one is a reptile. I took my pictures of details that I thought would help me identify the animal.   As the pictures
below will show, the carcass had been partially-eaten, and was also decomposing. So, what could it be?

    
   Carcass is in pretty bad shape.                     My foot next to the carcass for scale.              There's a quarter near the head          Here's a look at the skin. It isn't smoooth.

    
   A look a bit closer. Are those scales?        Pectoral area behind the head is chewed off         The head, no external gills.                      Some small teeth show, not hooked.
One of the animals that have a similar shape is a snake. Let's compare with some pictures  of Diamondback Watersnakes (Nerodia rhombifer) that I've taken in the past within a few yards
of where I found this carcass.  The carcass has no color pattern--even if it doesn't match this snake, it doesn't match any others, either.  The scales on the carcass are the wrong size and shape-
for this snake, and just about any other local snake. Can't see on the two snake pictures, but the carcass has NO large belly scales. The few teeth visible in the skull are wrong for a snake, too.
a snakes teeth are thin, sharp like needles, and the tips curve backwards.   I couldn't see any eyes on the carcass, so can't really compare those. The pictures don't show it well, but the tail
of the carcass was flattened vertically. No local species of snake have a tail that's flattened so that it pushes well--like an alligator's tail, or a tadpole....  And that brings up the second animal
that I thought it could possibly be.
    
That other animal is an amphibian. No, not a tadpole. A large salamander that lives in Texas (I've seen them at Brazos Bend State Park) called a Siren, or usually, a Lesser Siren. (Siren
intermedia).  Sirens can grow to 2 feet long (60.96 cm). There are two pictures above of one in the jaws of a Great Blue Heron. They do have a flattened tail. But they are totally smooth, and
they have two small front legs. The carcass doesn't show legs, but they could have been torn off where that damage is. Sirens also have large, exposed branching gills on the sides of their 
head. There are none here.  I really doubt that the carcass was a Siren, also.   So, what does that leave us?  How about an American Eel?  I think that this was the carcass of an American Eel
(Anguilla rostrata). They do live here, and I've found at least one report online of one being caught in Brays Bayou.  I've never seen one in the wild in Texas (or anywhere else). 

01/13/2018 and 01/20/2018 . Various species of the "tropical fish" known as Plecostomus have become established in Texas waters. They are considered invasive and
destructive. Since they have been living in these waters, it's reasonable to assume that they have survived winters here. However, over the last few weeks (specifically
from January 12 to January 20) we've had especially cold weather. During the first week there were about 4 days of temperatures around 30 degrees F. And during
the second week we had about 4 days near 20 degrees F. While I was visiting Archbishop Fiorenza Park on the 13th, I noticed many dead Plecostomus along the banks
of the lake. On the 20th, most of the carcasses were gone from where I'd seen them, but I did see Black Vultures eating a few.  I assume that the cold weather killed them.
The pictures of the dead fish are from the 13th. I've taken a picture of my foot near some of the carcasses for scale (shoe size 11). The pictures of the vulture
are frame grabs from a short video clip.   And the video is here.  (NOTE 7/19/2020): The fish in the pictures below are probably Pterygoplichthes species--but still armored catfish.)
    
 
    

11/9/2015  Since my investigation of the breaching fish, I've been looking through older video footage and photos of gar that I've filmed over the years. I've found a number of video clips 
showing gar (mostly Spotted Gar)gulping air.  In all the older material, including the Alligator gar I filmed this year, the breaching is not as active as it seemed to be in the video that I shot in 
September and October of this year. I've added them to this page, but put them the chronological order of the rest of the page. In the slow video, I can see a consistent process which seems
to take the 3 steps I've also described further down the page:  

1) The end of the jaws extend out of the water and open briefly (perhaps with slight opening of gill slits,).

2) The jaws and head extend further out of the water, and the jaws and gills slits open at the same time. A large quantity of gas is expelled from the gills slits, making large bubbles.

3)  The head submerged, the gar begins to sink. The gill slits open, and a small amount of gas is expelled making a small stream of bubbles.

At this time, I don't know exactly what is going on.

09/13/2015--10/11/2015  For some time this summer, fish have been "hitting" the surface of the water in various parts of the park. I'd been watching this
activity near the Spillway Trail. There was a lot of fish hitting the surface in Pilant Slough, from the Spillway west to the
Observation Tower (distance about 900 feet, according to Google Maps). I had assumed that most of the fish hitting the surface were Bowfin, and possibly Gar.  
I've observed both gar and bowin breathing air at BBSP before, and at those times, the breaching was relatively sedate.
*These* breaches were violent, sometimes spraying water for a wide area. And the activity brought many alligators there to hunt the fish.
    
I started watching more closely starting in September, where I determined that the fish seemed not to be hunting.
However, the water was usually obscured by glare or by murkiness, so I could not tell what kind of fish were surfacing. I was nearby when fisherman successfully caught
both bowfin ( Amia Calva) *and* gar (both spotted (Lepisosteus oculatus) and shortnosed(Lepisosteus platostomus).
 
        
                          BOWFIN                                             SHORTNOSE GAR
It seemed likely that these fish were the culprits, but I wanted to be sure. So, I started trying to capture high-speed video of the breaching events.
If I could capture an event at 210 frames per second, then I could play it back slower to identify the fish. This was
a bit difficult, but after 5 weekends (9/13/15 - 10/11/15), I caught enough video clips to make some identification. I've put these all together into one 5-minute clip.
I was able to identify bowfin in some of the clips. Most obvious identity key was the long dorsal fin, but the large blunt head and small pectoral fins were secondary keys.
Some of the other fish were gar; easily identifiable by the long, thin snout.  The clip is in 2 formats  here(wmv)  and here (mp4)  The animated gifs were made with frames
from the video.

            
                               BOWFIN                                                 BOWFIN                                             PLECOSTOMUS?

But, I saw a fish in a few of the clips that I believe was neither a gar nor a bowfin. The fish were usually dark, with a rounded head, but the pectoral and
pelvic fins were very large-much larger than on a bowfin and closer together than those on a gar. The 3rd gif above shows this fish.
I believe that these fish are examples of plecostomus! I have found carcasses of plecostomus near some of our local bodies of water.
Here's a picture of one that I took near Buffalo Bayou in 2009.

           

And here is a picture of a live one that I filmed today at a local pet shop.

       

From some research online, I have found that "plecostomus" can refer to anumber of different species of fish. They are also known to surface periodically to "gulp air",
possibly for bouyancy control. I haven't seen anything that shows they use the oxygen. Gar and Bowfin are related, and both have lungs. In some of the literature I've read, these are called
true lungs.

In AIR-BREATHING DURING ACTIVITY IN THE FISHES AMIA CALVA AND LEPISOSTEUS OCULATUS C. G. FARMER* AND D. C. JACKSON
Accepted 19 January; published on WWW 5 March 1998 it is stated that lungs appeared in fish *before* swim bladders. (p.943) ;
During low-level exercise, more than 50% of oxygen used by both species came from the air.  Bowfin and Spotted gar.(p. 945)
and on P.947 Increasing temperature increases the rate of air-breathing in bowfin. Spotted gar also increase air-breathing with temp.
Air breathing may be more important to support activity than surviving in hypoxic water. The fish CAN get O2 from air
if there is none in the water, but this situation happens less than the need driven by activity.
 
In EFFECTS OF TEMPERATURE AND LIGHT ON AERIAL BREATHING BEHAVIOR OF THE SPOTTED GAR,LEPISOSTEUS OCULATUS  by
GERARDUS C. DE ROTH THE OHIO JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 73(1): 34, January, 1973.
Freshwater gars gulp air at the surface even at the highest levels of dissolved Oxygen.Page 38.
In another study, gar were obligate air breathers at oxygen lower than 4.5 ppm but active gar were obligatory air breathers at higher oxygen concentrations. So, rising temperatures could
also cause more surface breathing. p39 (By definition water is hypoxic if it doesn't have enough O2 to support life (< 2ppm)  http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/hypoxia.html
Normal is 8-10 ppm (parts per million)

November  10, 2002 The image below (BOWFIN) is of an interesting "primitive" fish called a "Bowfin".
The water at the park got very high. In fact the nearby Big Creek was so filled that the water from Pilant Slough, which normally flows out of the park, was flowing back INTO the park from Big
Creek. As evidence of the amount of water we received, here it the fishing pier on Hale Lake, the deck of which usually stays at least 10 feet above water level (see HALE LAKE PIER, 
below).  This happened for about 2 days, until the water level dropped in Big Creek . As the water started flowing back out of Pilant Slough, other bodies of water were free to drain. 40 Acre
lake started flowing back under the footbridge, and a few predatory fish stationed themselves in the sluggish flow. Among them were a few Bowfin, and a few Spotted Gar (see image below).
  These fish were about 15 inches long. It is interesting to me that these "primitive" fish both inhabit the park, right along with various perch, sunfish and bass. Of course, let's not forget the 
Alligator Gar! The image below (HEAD AND SPINE) shows my completed gar as it is now.
----
                                BOWFIN                                                               SPOTTED GAR                                                      GAR HEAD AND SPINE                                               HALE LAKE PIER

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