A Snorkeling Biologist Snapped the First-Ever Photo of Newly Hatched California Giant Salamanders in the Wild. Here’s Why That’s a Big Deal

The discovery provides another key data point about a little-known species for which every observation matters

Carlyn Kranking | Associate Web Editor, Science

April 29, 2026

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At first, they looked like fish. The cluster of one-inch-long swimming creatures was tucked beneath rocks in frigid creek water. As National Park Service fisheries biologist Michael Reichmuth snorkeled slowly above them, he positioned his camera and snapped a photo.

Reichmuth was surveying juvenile coho salmon—but these mysterious animals were something else. “I noticed external gills and tiny developing legs,” he tells Smithsonian magazine. “They were amphibians, but I didn’t know the species.”

Once he found out what he was looking at, Reichmuth realized that his observation was much rarer than he thought, and it’s incredibly valuable to scientists. For the first time, his photograph captured the newly hatched larvae of a California giant salamander in the wild.

“I’ve never heard of someone finding them right after they’ve hatched,” says Gary Nafis, an amphibian and reptile expert who manages the online guide Californiaherps.com.

“Mike’s photograph is the first photograph I’ve seen of this life stage,” says Patrick Kleeman, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who confirmed the species’ identity from the photo. The larvae were young enough that their pale yolk sacs were still attached to their bodies, per a statement from the National Park Service, and the fact that so many were clustered together indicates that they’d only recently emerged from their eggs.

The sighting, made September 10, 2025, in California’s upper Olema Creek, offers just one data point—but it matters because the California giant salamander (Dicamptodon ensatus) is an incredibly elusive and poorly understood species. Despite being one of the largest land salamanders known—clocking in at 6 to 12 inches long—the amphibians can be hard to find and even harder to research.

Giant salamanders live across a narrow range north and south of San Francisco Bay, dwelling in the redwood forests and streams of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Marin County and Sonoma County. Young salamanders can be found in small groups, “but it takes a trained eye to see them among the rocks and woody debris,” says Lisette Arellano, associate director for community science at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. As for the adults, the blotchy brown creatures blend into their surroundings, and they spend most of their time underground or beneath downed trees.

“I find it amazing that these salamanders go about their lives largely unseen by people, even though they are abundant in our streams,” Kleeman says. “They make a difficult species to study, because they are hard to locate with any regularity.”

In part because of scientists’ lack of knowledge about the giant salamander, California considers it a “species of special concern” in need of conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies it as near threatened. Scientists think the salamander’s population might be in decline, but they don’t have enough data to know for sure. The creatures’ distribution, movements, habitat needs and early life are also largely uncertain.

Because they occupy such a small area that also has a dense human population, California giant salamanders likely face a high risk of habitat destruction and disturbance. What’s more, amphibians are very susceptible to environmental change. So, conservationists want to understand more about the salamander in order to protect it—and the key to doing that is data.

In 2023, scientists got a rare chance to study large numbers of giant salamanders. While working on a restoration project to improve salmon habitat in Muir Woods’ Redwood Creek, biologists found, measured and weighed hundreds of California giant salamanders, including adults, Arellano says. While that was an unusual opportunity because of their work—which involved removing rocks and putting in trees and logs—even individuals can contribute to salamander science if they happen to spot one.

Through a partnership known as One Tam, researchers are crowdsourcing observations of the cryptic amphibians in hopes of mapping out where the creatures are located. It’s part of a wider effort to understand the health of the ecosystem on Mount Tamalpais north of San Francisco. The giant salamander, per the project, represents a gap in what they know. So researchers are asking people to upload their observations of the California giant salamander to the citizen science platform iNaturalist, where scientists can access the information about where each salamander was found.

“A single photo logged in iNaturalist can become a data point that helps fill real knowledge gaps, showing where salamanders are turning up and what their habitats look like across the mountain,” Arellano says.

The observations will be used to estimate the age and geographic range of the population, document their behaviors and discern their health to inform conservation work. These findings can help guide decision-makers as they plan out how to care for the salamander’s habitat.

Against this backdrop, Reichmuth’s recent photo is a step forward for the salamander species. Given the very young age of the larvae, it highlights their nesting habitat. And the sighting can help scientists learn about the elusive creatures’ larval development.

“It gives us valuable information about where and under what conditions the species breeds,” Reichmuth says. “That helps us better understand habitat needs and supports efforts to protect the sensitive stream areas they rely on for long-term survival.”

On a more basic level, the photograph of the hatchling salamanders captures a view of a creature that many don’t ever get to see. “Observations like this generate excitement and wonder about a species most people may never have heard of,” Kleeman says.

Carlyn Kranking | | Read More

Carlyn Kranking is Smithsonian magazine’s associate web editor for science.