Last Search for Rare Fish

Last call for the Maryland darter. The elusive little fish, one of the rarest in the world, has not been seen in 21 years, according to Baltimore Sun.

Now, government and university biologists are teaming up for one more, perhaps final search for it in Harford County, where it has not been spotted more than sporadically since it was first noticed almost a century ago in a fast-flowing creek near Havre de Grace.

Named for the only state in which it has ever been found, this bottom-feeding member of the perch family has been seen in just three creeks off the lower Susquehanna River. No one has spied more than a handful of them at any one time since the 1960s. Repeated efforts to locate them in the past two decades have come up empty-handed.

But biologists say they are going to give it one more go, and at least some believe there is a chance they will still find it, using new gear and searching for in at least one new place – the lower Susquehanna itself.