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AquaExtension

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Educational agency dedicated to providing science-based wildlife and fisheries information.

10/23/2026

This week, Haley Kokel opened the doors of Fish On Aquatic Plants for an evening nursery tour with students from RWFM 370/670, who are currently learning all about aquatic vegetation management!

As part of the course, students are tasked with compiling a digital plant collection featuring 25 obligate freshwater plant species. This extra credit opportunity gave students the chance to earn a few bonus points, snap some much-needed plant photos, and put their identification skills to work in a real-world setting.

But aquatic vegetation management isn't just about controlling unwanted plants! Haley also shared insight into the restoration side of aquatic plant management, highlighting the importance of native aquatic vegetation and its role in healthy aquatic ecosystems.

A huge THANK YOU to Haley for taking time out of her evening to share her expertise, welcome our students, and let them wander the nursery in search of their next plant collection addition! 💚

10/19/2026

“I’m feeling a little woozy here…” 😵‍💫🔪

What’s in your aquatic haunted house? Drop your fieldwork horror story below. 👇

10/12/2026

A little more Aggie gold on the AquaExtension team! 💍👍

Please join us in congratulating Kori Paliwoda on receiving her Aggie Ring! Kori is a huge part of our team and has spent the past year serving as a staff diagnostic scientist at the Aquatic Diagnostics Laboratory.

We’re proud of her hard work and excited to celebrate this special milestone. Congratulations, Kori! 🎉

10/09/2026

Something sinister is lurking beneath the surface... and your birth month has determined which parasite is waiting for you.

From bloodsucking hitchhikers to parasites that invade organs, manipulate their hosts, and wreak havoc on unsuspecting fish, these freshwater horrors are more than just nightmares. They're real. 🩸

Swipe to uncover your parasitic fate... IF YOU DARE.

Drop your birth month in the comments and tell us which creepy aquatic creature has claimed you!

🎃 Happy spooky season from , where science is sometimes scarier than fiction.

📸: adapted from Aquatic Diagnostic Laboratory cases

10/07/2026

🐍 Eel? Snake? Try salamander.

Amphiumas are some of the strangest aquatic animals hiding in southern wetlands, bayous, ditches, and even weedy farm ponds. Despite their long, eel-like appearance, these secretive creatures are actually aquatic salamanders.

In Texas, the Three-Toed Amphiuma (Amphiuma tridactylum) is the only native species and can grow up to 3 feet long, making it the largest amphibian found in the state.

Want to learn more about this wonderfully weird pond and wetland resident, including how it survives low oxygen, what it eats, and why its genome is 25–30 times larger than ours?

📬 Read the full story in our latest newsletter, linked in our bio!

10/02/2026

Heavy rainfall, runoff, overflowing edges, and strong winds can displace aquatic vegetation, moving plants into areas where they weren’t growing before.

We often think of this happening with floating plants like duckweed or watermeal, which can easily be pushed across the water’s surface. But submerged aquatic plants can move too.

The video shows a great example with coontail trying to make its journey to a new area. Unlike many submerged plants, coontail is rootless and typically remains free-floating or loosely anchored within the water column. That makes it especially easy for flowing water, runoff, and wind-driven currents to pick up entire plants or fragments and relocate them around a pond.

And because coontail can reproduce vegetatively through fragmentation, those displaced pieces may establish elsewhere when conditions are favorable.

So after a major rain event, don’t be surprised if your pond vegetation suddenly looks a little different. The plants may not have appeared overnight. They may have simply gone for a ride.

10/01/2026

🎣 You’ve been fishing all year—what can your catch tell you about your pond?

If you joined our April Fish Management Strategies webinar, you know that keeping catch and harvest records is an important part of pond management. Now, let’s put those records to work!

Join AquaExtension for Interpreting Your Catch: Using Your Catch Records to Measure the Health and Growth of Your Fishery.

We’ll use real pond datasets and simple online tools to explore what your records reveal about fish abundance, species composition, size distribution, and body condition—and how to use those findings to guide harvest and management decisions.

Consistent records can help you track changes over time at little to no cost. Bring your catch records and learn how to turn a season of fishing into useful information for your pond!

📅 October 20
🕕 6:00 p.m.
💻 Online webinar
🔗 Register: tx.ag/CatchRecords or use the link in our bio

Thank you to our Title Sponsor, Sport Fish Direct, for supporting AquaExtension!

09/22/2026

joined new County Extension Agents this morning for Ag & Natural Resources Fundamentals!

Aquatic vegetation is one of the top reasons pond owners reach out to their local County Extension Agent, so we put our new agents’ plant ID skills to work.

We started with the four major categories of aquatic vegetation and then gave them a little taste of what plant identification looks like in the real world:

📸 First: Identify plants from photos, similar to what often arrives in an email from a pond owner.

🔎 Next: Use our aquatic vegetation ID booklets to key out the plants and narrow down the possibilities.

🌿 Finally: Examine live specimens and identify what was sitting right in front of them, just like they might encounter during a site visit.

Because identifying the plant is the first step toward figuring out what, if anything, needs to be done about it.

Thanks to our new agents for jumping in and getting their hands wet! 💧

09/17/2026

Cattail ID: Mind the Gap!

Broadleaf cattail (Typha latifolia) and southern cattail (Typha domingensis) can look very similar, but their inflorescences provide a helpful identification clue.

A cattail inflorescence has two sections:
The narrow, pollen-producing male (staminate) spike is on top.
The thicker, “cigar-shaped” female (pistillate) spike is below.

🔎 Broadleaf cattail: The male and female portions usually touch, leaving little or no exposed stem between them. The mature female spike also tends to be thicker and dark brown.

🔎 Southern cattail: A noticeable section of bare stem commonly separates the male and female portions. Its female spike is generally narrower and lighter or cinnamon brown.

The gap is easiest to observe while the plant is flowering because the male portion eventually sheds and may disappear. Natural variation and hybridization can complicate identification, so examine several plants and consider additional characteristics before confirming the species.

Sometimes the key to cattail identification is simply to mind the gap!

09/11/2026

We’ll believe it when we see it. 😂

Preventive pond management is often easier, and less expensive,than waiting until aquatic plants, algae, or water-quality problems become severe.

Address

534 John Kimbrough
College Station, TX
77843

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Website

https://linkin.bio/aquaextension

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