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By Clarissa Pi.\tai>o
Special to the Rappahannock News
While the Potomac River had an alarming intruder recently, the Asian snakehead, a tiny stream in Rappahannock County had a visitor which has not been seen in the area for nearly 100 years.
A sea lamprey, rare in Virginia, arrived in county waters on Friday, May 14. The fact it is here surprised state fishery officials.
The lamprey, which is 28 and a half inches long, was first seen Friday morning by Sam Parrish and Paul Padgett in a culvert on Black Rock Farm off Fodderstack Road in Flint Hill.
The two were standing there wondering what the "huge fish” was when Sam Marvin arrived to pick up co-worker Padgett.
Marvin grabbed the nearest tool: a pitchfork. The fish was wading in three to six inches of water. When Marvin poked it. in an attempt to identify the specimen, it immediately sprung out of the water, leaping to the height of Marvin’s knee, about two feet.
“At this point I was thinking it might be a gar or an oH, 'out it was obviously not from around here,” said Marvin.
“My motivation instantly changed from dinner to investigation.”
Wffien Marvin speared the creature with his pitchfork, he had no idea he had caught a sea lamprey that had traveled nearly 120 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to Black Rock Farm.
The sea lamprey is not just uncommon in Virginia. It is extremely rare. It is even more unusual to find one in the
See LAMPREY, Page A6
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