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If I only had a penny for
every Mono Lake brine shrimp I’d be a billionaire!
NOT "PEEL AND
EAT" Within Mono Lake’s briny waters are trillions of brine shrimp, Artemia monica, a species of brine shrimp found nowhere else in the world. An estimated 4-6 trillion brine shrimp inhabit the lake during the warmer summer months. Mono Lake shrimp are tiny, about the size of your thumbnail, and by July Mono Lake water looks very much like shrimp soup. Brine shrimp have no practical food value for humans, but birds regard them as haute cuisine. Abundant shrimp provide a feast for the birds, yet the birds barely put a dent in the brine shrimp population until nearly two million Eared Grebes arrive for "shrimp cocktail" in the fall.
FISHLESS WATERS The fishing at Mono Lake is excellent, its just the
catching that’s bad—Mono Lake’s alkalinity
(pH=10) makes life impossible for fish.
DISAPPEARING ACT If you venture down to Mono Lake in the winter and you will find the water empty of brine shrimp. The brine shrimp population dies off as the lake cools in the winter. Yet, by spring tiny brine shrimp mysteriously begin to reappear. Where did this new generation of brine shrimp come from? In the late summer and fall, female brine shrimp produce tiny cysts, (dormant, undeveloped embryos), that overwinter at the bottom of the lake. In the spring the cysts develop into tiny shrimp as the lake warms--beginning a new generation of shrimp.
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In contrast the
freshwater streams flowing into Mono Lake are home to
non-native Rainbow and Brown Trout. Fisherfolk legend has
it that trout will sometimes dart from freshwater streams
into Mono Lake water to gobble up unsuspecting shrimp.
Otherwise the only way fish get to eat Mono Lake brine
shrimp is through the frozen, packaged variety that the
local brine shrimp plant harvests for tropical fish food.
