This is not my first mystery and would not be the last.
That’s why I love science!
On 8/21/12 I went to Whitman Camp to do a program with a
group of kids. We went to Billing Lake and collected macroinvertebrates. Always
looking for those elusive crustaceans, I kept all I could find. I recently went
over my collection and rebelled a population of amphipods, Hyallela azteca . But with the amphipods I found a true shrimp.
This small and young shrimp is not completely developed and is difficult to
identify as not all the parts are there, but I believe that it is a Grass
Shrimp, or Palaemonetes spp.
Lake Billings is a fresh body water, Far from any brakeage
or saline environment. I took some chemistry readings that day. There was a
Dissolved Oxygen of 7.5 ppm, at a temperature of 25.3 degrees centigrade, a pH
of 7.6 and an alkalinity of 80 ppm. which is high for that area but by no means
saline. So what was a grass shrimp doing there?
Hyallela azteca is
found in fresh water. I also saw some snails, Pseudosaccinea colunella, and some Helisoma spp, all fresh water organisms. This site is at least 7
miles from any salt water.
Here are some pictures of this grass shrimp and also a map.
Coordinates for this collection were 41.50938 Latitude and
-71. 87062 longitudes.
