Photos: The Quiet Wonder of Vernal Pools

Ephemeral and fragile, vernal pools nurture a surprising variety of specialized animal species well adapted to these seasonal spring wetlands

Text and photos by Steven David Johnson
Conservation
Mar 26, 2025

A spotted salamander egg mass lies nestled just beneath the surface of a vernal pool in Augusta County, Virginia.

ON EARLY SPRING EVENINGS, the Appalachian forest awakes from winter. Rainy, dark and cool, it is perfect amphibian weather. While wood frogs call, spotted salamanders crawl from underground refuges and move toward their breeding sites: ephemeral water bodies, called vernal pools, that form from seasonal rains and snowmelt. Because they dry out regularly, vernal pools create fish-free habitat ideal for salamanders, frogs, insects and crustaceans that otherwise would become fish food.

Clad in neoprene chest waders one spring evening, I tread gingerly through the forest, tracing the slow-motion migration of the salamanders across leaf litter to a small vernal pool. Angling my light to the water, I see a scene reminiscent of a tropical coral reef: Elegant fairy shrimp swim upside down in a cloud of copepods, tiny orange-red crustaceans sporting single blue eyes. A fringy-gilled marbled salamander larva glides through the cloud, gulping down one of these diminutive cyclops.

Documenting the cycles of vernal pool life is like a spiral where each season adds depth. On that chilly March evening, I watch a female spotted salamander deposit pale blue eggs just below the surface. In May, I return to view the developing eggs. Gazing through my viewfinder, I’m transported to a world measured in millimeters. A salamander embryo emerges from its egg capsule then hides in submerged leaves. Tiny green hydra use the jellylike eggs as hunting platforms, while alien-looking caddisfly larvae and golden-filigreed wood frog tadpoles prowl nearby. Hours pass, and the sun sinks. I look up from my camera, slightly disoriented, my consciousness slowly returning to human scale.

Vernal pool habitats are as fragile as they are magical. Once, while crouched by a pool photographing a salamander nursery, I was startled by an engine’s roar. Soon, a four-wheel-drive truck splashed through the water, stopping only when the driver, who’d seen nothing but a mud puddle, noticed me and my gear. Yet while threats—from off-road vehicles to development, fossil fuel infrastructure and climate change—grow, a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision dramatically reduced federal protection for wetlands such as vernal pools. Now it’s more critical than ever for states, localities, organizations and individuals to step up our efforts to safeguard these unique underwater worlds.

See more photos of vernal pools, their environments and their inhabitants in the slideshow below.

Read about conservation photographer Steven David Johnson.

Sheltering abundant life—from cricket frogs and marbled salamander larvae to fairy shrimp and minute crustaceans such as copepods and daphnia—Cone Pond in Virginia’s George Washington National Forest can be up to 10 feet deep in spring, but it dries up completely during the summer.
A diversity of plant life thrives in the forests surrounding such pools, including pink lady’s slipper orchids (pictured), rare sedges and rushes, and—in the basins of the dried-out pools—the federally threatened Virginia sneezeweed.
A Virginia state endangered species, the eastern tiger salamander (pictured, flanked by phantom midge larvae) is one of six salamander species in the genus Ambystoma that use vernal pools as breeding habitat in Virginia. Part of an ancient group that dates back to the Pleistocene, a tiny relict population of eastern tiger salamanders survives near the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Following a spotted salamander breeding event in Virginia, the amphibian’s egg masses rest among a vernal pool’s aquatic vegetation. Decades ago, hundreds of spotted salamanders would emerge across western Virginia on a predictable schedule in an event referred to as the “big night.” As a result of climate change, such regional emergences today are much smaller, more fragmented and less regular. Globally, two in five of all amphibian species, including many salamanders, are threatened with extinction.
A female spotted salamander deposits her pale blue eggs just beneath the surface of a small vernal pool in Rockingham County, Virginia. With distinctive yellow or orange spots on their backs and legs, spotted salamanders are iconic vernal pool inhabitants found across much of the eastern United States, always close to still water. As adults, the 6- to 10-inch-long amphibians spend much of the year underground, emerging on rainy, spring nights to breed and lay their eggs.
Many salamander eggs are transparent, giving biologists and wildlife photographers a chance to view the successive stages of embryo development.
Spotted salamander embryos take on a striking yellow-green color due to photosynthetic algae that grow inside the egg capsules. According to research by Gettysburg College biologist Ryan Kerney, the algae, which provide oxygen within the egg, also permeate cells of the embryo. The association is somewhat similar to the coral–algal symbiosis found on tropical reefs—and the first time such a relationship has been discovered in a vertebrate species.
At about five weeks, an algae-infused embryo is nearly ready to hatch. After hatching, the animals spend the next few months in the water, hiding and hunting among leaves and other underwater detritus for aquatic invertebrates such as small crustaceans. In about two to four months, these larvae metamorphose into adults, crawling out of the water to test their land legs. As the young salamanders mature, they’ll join the local breeding population, beginning again the species’ ancient cycle of life in and around a seasonal vernal pool.