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For some time now, I've been lamenting the absence of quite a few fishes from the aquarium trade, species that would seem on the face of it to have MUCH to recommend them, either because they are stunningly beautiful, or because they possess other attributes that make them desirable aquarium occupants, such as small size (and therefore modest demands upon aquarium space), hardiness or excellent temperament. Among the species on my 'wish list' (some of which I have now at last found) have been Ember Tetras, Anomalochromis thomasi Cichlids (which I keep recommending as the ideal Cichlids for beginners), Rasbora vaterifloris and Neolebias ansorgei Characins from Africa. However, upon doing some pondering, and a little geographical cross referencing, I've decided to share my findings.

First of all, there is the question of accessibility. One of the beauties of the Amazon River system is that it's accessible. The Amazon is big enough to sail ocean-going vessels upon it, and Brazil still relies heavily upon ship-borne trade, so infrastructure for collectors is already in place. Add to this that some of the all time aquarium favourites hail from this region, and have been collected in large numbers for the trade ever since the 1930s, and the end result is that when someone discovers a new fish species in the Amazon (i.e., all those L-number Plecs, C-number Corys and the host of new Characins hitting the market) there's a good chance that they'll make it to the market quickly, and that someone will start breeding them. Cochu's Blues are a prime example, because they are wonderful little fishes, and sky high desirable on many aquarists' lists, and then of course the Catfish specialists regard the Amazon as a kind of Catfish paradise, because there's something like 2,000 species living there

However, some places that are home to drop dead gorgeous fishes are anything BUT accessible. If you have to spend months hacking through dense jungle, or need regular helicopter flights to reach a prime collecting spot, this is going to dent the collector's profits considerably. Typical helicopters that might be pressed into service (Bell Jet Rangers etc) cost $400 per hour and up to maintain whether or not they're flying, and retail at around $6 million apiece, so unless your collectors have started their operation with a LOT of backing capital, they're not going to resort to such means. Likewise, if it takes inordinate amounts of time to ship the fishes to the nearest outpost of civilisation, even BEFORE they make it to the main dsitribution points such as Singapore, then this is going to make many collectors ask if the trouble is worth it.

One place that springs to mind as awaiting exploration is Low's Gully. This is a kind of 'Lost World' straight out of a Conan Doyle novel, a place that has been seen by fewer than two dozen white men since it was first discovered. The reason? The easiest approach involves a 15,000 foot climb up Mount Kinabalu, followed by abseiling two miles or more down the north face of the mountain. Once in there, getting out is ... well, a group of mixed British and Hong Kong soldiers found out about that in 1993, when they became lost on a jungle survival exercise, and were rescued in the nick of time by Malaysian rescue helicopters. Low's Gully is completely uninhabited by humans, and given the places that humans have colonised, this should be an instant 'heads up' as to the hostility of the place to human life in the long term. While the biodiversity of Low's Gully is something many scientists dream of exploring, the logistics of doing that in a safe manner (i.e., your scientists get to return home safe and well) are daunting - it's considered by those in the know to be almost as difficult to maintain a presence in Low's Gully as it is to send men to the Moon. Low's Gully is the kind of place that makes some people wonder if there's the odd Brontosaurus still alive in there!

Though Low's Gully is an extreme example - and this Google Maps page]http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Mount+Kinabalu&ie=UTF8&ll=6.087984,116.562881&spn=0.142358,0.345383&t=h&om=1[/link] shows why, Low's Gully is the impenetrable cloud covered bit to the north of the orange mountain - there are plenty of other places on Earth that boast similar logistical difficulties. Mount Roraima on the border between Venezuela and Guyana is another 'Lost World' - [link=here is another Google Maps image]http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&q=Mount+Roraima&ie=UTF8&near=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=29.081881,63.28125&t=h&om=1&ll=3.096636,-59.919434&spn=2.287147,3.955078[/link], and [link=this page]http://members.shaw.ca/beyondnootka/articles/roraima.html[/link] tells you a fair amount about it. This is a mountain that has rivers and lakes flowing right off the top of it - and who knows what fishes living in them - but you'd better not even THINK of going there unless you're part of a full-scale expedition. This is the very place that inspired Conan Doyle's novel, by the way, and more can be found about it [link=here.

Accessibility alone doesn't guarantee that fish collectors will go there. One place that springs to mind as being somewhere that fish collectors will think twice about visiting is Mount Elgon (Wikipedia page here]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Elgon[/link]). It's accessible all right, certainly by African standards, but there's a little problem associated with the place. Basically, two people who visited the area contracted Ebola and died. Scientists are still pondering on the reasons for this, and the place tends nowadays to be visited by specialists in lethal viruses looking for the reservoir of Ebola that periodically provides the source of fulminating outbreaks (the last big one hitting Zaire in 2003). Your average fish collector is probably going to be very wary of visiting a place that is likely to be the source of a lethal virus with 90% mortality, no vaccine and no cure. [link=Hre's another satellite image of the general area. However, Lake Turkana, not that far away, is home to a nice range of unique Rift Lake fishes, though it's also the home of a large population of Nile Crocodiles, which reach 25 feet in length ...

So, aside from the hazards of getting lost because the place has been explored by fewer than a dozen white men, or falling prey to some particularly vicious natural hazard, there's another obstacle to fish collectors seeking to assuage our appetites for wonderful and varied tropical fish species. This comes under the general heading of 'Man made hazards'.

One of the sad facts of life is that quite a few places that would otherwise be visited by collectors are avoided like the plague because of that lamentable tendency of human beings to fail to get along with each other. Certain parts of Sri Lanka, home to the lovely Rasbora vaterifloris, are not going to see too many collectors in the near future because the geographical locations where these fishes are found just happen to have been a battleground in the civil war between the mainly Sinhalese national government and the scessionist group known as the Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam, and like most civil wars, this one has been a fairly unpleasant affair. Fish collectors, particularly if they happen to be white Europeans or Americans, tend not to favour venturing into regions where they are likely to come under mortar fire, or become caught between warring factions armed to the teeth with AK-47s and a willingness to shoot on sight at anything that moves. One rule of thumb I've heard being used (and only partly as a joke) is that if the local towns have more armoured personnel carriers on the roads than private cars, then stay well away.

Likewise, some of the nastiness that has erupted between groups of people in Africa who happen not to like each other (Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda being a particularly insidious example) means that away from the Rift Lakes and certain collecting spots for Killies, the home waters of quite a few lovely African fishes look set to remain unexplored by the major collectors for some time to come. So as a result, there is a dearth in the hobby of Nanochromis Cichlids, particularly Nanochromis dimidiatus, which prior to the 1970s was surprisingly widely available. Assorted episodes of human strife have put paid to that abundance, however. As long as some people continue to think that wars are fun (P.J. O'Rourke had a nice dissertation on this in the book Holidays in Hell) then we'll keep missing out on a range of highly desirable fishes simply because, through no fault of the fishes themselves, their home waters are places that most sensible people would not want to visit without some guarantee of safe conduct, and in some of those places, such guarantee of safe conduct involves a battalion of marines with helicopter gunship support. Heigh ho.

So, for those like myself, who lament the absence of some lovely fishes, here's some reasons why they're absent. Such is life.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Great read, Calilasseia. It reads like the justification for a local fish club to foster one or two of those fish that are an economic disaster for the LFS but would light the eye of a hobbyist!



__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

Which quite a few aquarist societies here in the UK do, but then forget to tell the rest of the world that they're doing it ...

I'm sure that if I dug around, I'd find someone over here with Neolebias ansorgei or Rasbora vaterifloris, but knowing my luck, they'd be in Penzance or Inverness, which are places over 300 miles away from me and hardly practical from a cycling standpoint

Plus, even the railways would take 9 hours just to get me one way. Then I'd have to pick up the fish, then find a way of keeping them happy for 9 hours on the return journey.

If some genius devises a suspended animation transportation cubicle for fishes, or better still a teleporter, then they'll make an absolute fortune, I can tell you!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002