Every so often, hellbenders can be caught accidently by anglers. If you do catch a hellbender, it is recommended you carefully remove the hook if possible and if not, cut the line as close to the hellbender as you can and release it immediately back into the water without harming it.
Click this image to watch a video of a hellbender’s catch and safe release
Photo by Michael Kinney
“While things like buffer plantings and streambank stabilizations are great, they are also usually small localized projects within a particular watershed, so they typically only offset the sediment input into the water at a local level. There is still continued input into the water from elsewhere in the watershed,” Petokas said. “I don’t know if the issue is increasing, but it is still a big concern. There are areas where you can drive through our watershed and see cattle in streams. That’s not changing very quickly, so we still have a lot of problems out there.” Another issue hellbenders face is water pollution. They breathe directly through their skin – the loose lasagna-like wrinkles on their sides increase surface area to improve that process. So any pollutants in a stream can cause immediate negative impacts for the species. “Even with a number of improvements in
water quality in the area, there is still a loss of water quality we continue to see – things like inputs from agriculture and mining and even from our roadways such as salting and spray - ing of oils and tars.” Petokas has also seen acute events of spills wipe out entire populations of hellbenders in our watershed, including an incident in 2006 when a rail car overturned next to a tributary and dumped sodium hydroxide over the stream bank. “Also, the containment of our streams by human infrastructure has limited the ability of the streams themselves to function the way they would naturally,” he said. “And even disease, like the chytrid fungus may be caus - ing issues. We don’t know its exact impact, but we think it can take years before the animals are weakened enough by the fungal infection before they are harmed by it.
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