Fish in this arizona lake are living over 100 years – and scientists can’t explain it

An Arizona lake tucked into the Superstition Mountains is quietly rewriting what we think we know about aging.

12 News reporter Kyle Simchuk says Apache Lake is home to buffalofish that aren’t just old for fish – many of them are over 100 years old, making them some of the longest-lived vertebrates on Earth.

They were once assumed to live maybe 10 to 20 years.

Now, thanks to a team of scientists and obsessive anglers, we know some of these fish were alive before World War I ended.

A Desert Lake Hiding Century-Old Fish

In his report for 12 News, Kyle Simchuk explains that Apache Lake is a remote reservoir carved into the Superstition Mountains, and it holds “some of the oldest living vertebrates on the planet.”

These buffalofish have lived through world wars, the Great Depression, the atomic age, and the dawn of the internet, all while quietly cruising a desert lake most anglers ignore.

Simchuk notes that many of these buffalofish are over 80, and the oldest confirmed in Apache Lake so far is 108 years old. That’s not a typo – a freshwater fish older than most great-grandparents.

What makes the story even stranger is that, as Simchuk reports, scientists used to think buffalofish topped out at 10 to 20 years. This isn’t just a tweak to the lifespan chart; it’s a complete rewrite.

How A Minnesota Scientist Was Lured To Arizona

The key scientist in this mystery is Dr. Alec Lackmann, a research professional at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Simchuk explains that Lackmann first made waves in the scientific community by showing that bigmouth buffalofish in the Midwest were living into their 80s, 90s, and even past 100.

Lackmann told 12 News that he first noticed odd black and orange spots on bigmouth buffalo in northwestern Minnesota. When he asked people in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources what those markings were, no one could explain them.

Later, Lackmann’s team discovered those spots are “age spots” – markings that build up as the fish age. That clue led him to prove that buffalofish are among the longest-lived freshwater fish on the planet, far beyond what anyone had suspected.

Simchuk reports that the Arizona connection started in 2021 with a single email from an angler named Stuart Black, who had been catching strange, heavily spotted buffalofish in Apache Lake.

The Anglers Who Became “Buffalo Soldiers”

Stuart Black describes himself as a kind of citizen scientist – an angler who fell in love with buffalofish long before they were headline material.

In Simchuk’s report, Black explains that in Arizona “buffalo fish are not on the sport fish radar.” Most anglers chase bass, crappie, and catfish. Carp get some attention. Buffalo rarely do.

About seven or eight years ago, carp anglers using modern techniques started catching buffalofish by accident. That’s when Black and his friends got curious and began targeting them intentionally, learning their habits and documenting what they found.

After reading one of Lackmann’s studies in 2021, Black noticed the same black-and-orange “age spots” on Apache Lake fish that the Minnesota research described. He tracked down Lackmann’s email, sent photos, and hoped for a response.

Simchuk says Black barely had time to wonder if he used the right email. Within 30 minutes, his phone rang. It was Dr. Lackmann, calling from the upper Midwest and saying, essentially, “I need to be out there as soon as possible.”

Within an hour of that first email, the two had already begun planning a research trip to Apache Lake. That’s how a hidden desert population of century-old fish suddenly landed on the scientific map.

Proving A Fish Really Is 100 Years Old

Of course, saying a fish is 100 and proving it are two different things.

Simchuk reports that to confirm their age, Lackmann had to study the buffalofish’s otoliths – tiny inner “ear stones” that help fish with balance and spatial orientation.

Lackmann told 12 News that aging fish with otoliths works “just like aging a tree,” where scientists count growth rings. Each cold season slows the fish’s metabolism and leaves a ring in the structure, letting researchers count years with surprising accuracy.

But that accuracy comes with a cost.

Black told Simchuk that he and his fellow anglers “hate killing fish,” especially ones they usually catch and release. Still, they agreed to sacrifice a limited number of buffalofish so Lackmann could remove the otoliths and age them.

In the end, 23 buffalofish from Apache Lake were harvested for science. Black says they didn’t waste them – the fish were cooked and eaten. He recalls that his whole family loved the tacos, and only later did they realize they’d just eaten 100-year-old fish.

The lab results, Simchuk reports, were astonishing: over 90% of the sampled fish were more than 80 years old. The oldest black buffalofish from Apache was 108.

Lackmann went a step further and used bomb radiocarbon dating — a method that looks for the spike in carbon-14 left behind by mid-20th-century nuclear bomb testing — to validate that the otolith rings really mark annual growth. He told 12 News that this confirmed the rings are true yearly markers, just like in other long-lived species.

It’s an eerie thought: these fish literally carry the atomic age etched into their inner ears.

Forgotten Stocking, Hidden Survivors

Simchuk’s report also shows that this story goes back more than a century.

Stuart Black walks viewers through the history. In the early 1910s, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries realized that floods along the Mississippi River were stranding native fish, including buffalofish, in temporary ponds that dried up after the water receded.

To avoid wasting a valuable food resource, federal officials began rescuing those fish, moving them into hatcheries, and shipping them around the country to stock new waters.

Around the same time, Black explains, Arizona’s first two U.S. senators asked Congress for permission to stock their new showpiece reservoir – Roosevelt Lake, completed in 1911 – with a hardy food fish that could feed the young state for decades. They chose buffalofish.

On October 10, 1917, 420 buffalofish, each only 6 to 12 inches long, were transported from Iowa by rail and wagon and released into Roosevelt Lake.

According to Black, the fish thrived. When additional dams were built downstream between 1925 and 1930, creating Canyon Lake, Apache Lake, and Saguaro Lake, young buffalofish drifted and swam down the Salt River system and colonized each new reservoir.

Roosevelt, Canyon, and Saguaro all saw heavy commercial fishing for carp and buffalofish from the 1930s through the 1970s. Black notes that Phoenix unexpectedly became a national hub for shipping these fish to big cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Apache Lake, however, was different. Its rough, remote access via the old Apache Trail made large-scale commercial fishing far more difficult.

Black describes Apache as a “little Jurassic Park” – forgotten, enclosed, and remote. While other lakes were heavily worked over, Apache’s buffalofish quietly survived, aging year after year in relative peace.

Why These Buffalo Fish Don’t Seem To Age

The weirdest part, as Simchuk highlights, is not just that these fish live so long – it’s that they stay in incredible shape.

Dr. Lackmann told 12 News that century-old bigmouth buffalofish are often healthier than much younger individuals in their 20s and 30s. Instead of slowing down and falling apart, these fish seem to “advance into prime condition” as they approach 100.

He points out that humans show obvious signs of aging – wrinkles, gray hair, declining strength – but these fish keep thick bodies, strong fins, and smooth skin deep into what should be extreme old age.

Simchuk notes that Lackmann and Black suspect several factors might be involved. One possibility is diet: bigmouth buffalofish feed low on the food chain, eating plankton and tiny phytoplankton called diatoms.

Past diet studies in Apache Lake found that winter buffalo diets were rich in diatoms and other carotenoid-packed organisms. Those pigments and compounds may act as natural antioxidants or protect the fish from sun and environmental stress, although that’s still speculation.

Black told Simchuk he even saw damaged tails regenerate over time, with fish that once had shredded fins later recaptured in “pristine condition.” That kind of healing hints at powerful repair mechanisms we barely understand.

It’s not hard to see why Black jokingly calls their research project “Trillion Dollar Slime.” He and Lackmann want to know what’s in the protective mucus on these fish that lets them spend a century in the sun without tumors, skin cancer, or visible breakdown.

A Race To Protect Arizona’s “Century Fish”

For all their resilience, the buffalofish of Apache Lake are not safe.

Simchuk reports that Black and his fellow “Buffalo Soldiers” have never caught a truly young buffalofish in Apache. The lake has no natural spawning rivers with dense vegetation where fry can hide, and any young that do hatch may be quickly eaten by predators.

Lackmann explains that buffalofish use “episodic reproduction,” meaning they may go many years or even decades between successful recruiting events where young survive to adulthood. That makes it hard to know the true upper limit of their lifespan – and easy to wipe out a population without realizing it.

Right now, Simchuk notes, there are no special protections for buffalofish in Arizona. They can be harvested in unlimited numbers, and bowfishing tournaments often target fish that look like carp.

Black points out a simple but dangerous problem: from a distance, it’s almost impossible for a bowfisher to tell a 10-pound carp from a 15-pound, 100-year-old native buffalofish. There’s no malice in that mistake – just a lack of awareness.

That’s why Black told 12 News he wants Apache Lake to be designated as a special preserve for “century fish,” with strict catch-and-release rules for buffalofish. In his view, this is the only place on Earth where three buffalofish species reach such ages, and that deserves world-class protection.

From a broader perspective, it’s hard to disagree.

If these fish really do hold clues about longevity, regeneration, cancer resistance, and healthy aging, then Apache Lake isn’t just another desert reservoir – it’s a living laboratory.

Simchuk’s report makes one thing clear: after more than a century in these waters, the buffalofish still have a lot to teach us. The real question is whether we’ll protect them long enough to hear the rest of their story.

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The article Fish in this arizona lake are living over 100 years – and scientists can’t explain it first appeared on Survival World.