Manding Nguyen

Yeah.

The last time anyone saw a live blanco-blind salamander, it was near a natural spring that connects to a huge underground world of watery caverns, lakes, and streams that can reach more than a thousand feet deep and that stretches for thousands of miles under south-central Texas.

This is the world of the blanco-blind salamander, the Edwards aquifer.

Oh, wow.

90 feet down.

Echo.

All we can see is a smooth pool of water that dips into black.

Staring into the well, I try to imagine what's going on deep beneath the surface.

The Edwards Aquifer is one of the most biodiverse aquifers in the world, right in the middle of Texas.

The creatures that call this aquifer home have been evolving in isolation for tens of millions of years, and many of them aren't found anywhere else in the world.

There are blind catfish, countless tiny invertebrates, a lot of creatures which never needed to evolve eyes in the perpetual darkness.

But despite how huge this aquifer is, most of it is pretty hard to access.

Most of the aquifer is packed with layers of sediment, with openings just big enough for water and small creatures to slip through.

And hidden in this world somewhere, we think, is the blanco-blind salamander.

Andy has been looking for over 20 years, but hasn't found a single one.

A big problem for him has been access.

Most of Texas is private land, and Andy's found that landowners don't really like biologists coming onto their land and digging into their water sources, trying to catch salamanders.

Thankfully, he doesn't need to catch the blanco-blind salamander itself to know it's out there.

All he needs is a clue.

Andy has this plastic container to sample water, and he throws it into the well.