FISHBIO: Fisheries research, monitoring, and conservation

May 20, 2013

The Mekong River is home to many imperiled living treasures: unique fish species of great cultural, economic, and conservation value that are now endangered. The Jullien’s Golden Carp (Probarbus jullieni) and its cousin the Thicklipped Barb (Probarbus labeamajor) are some of the largest freshwater fishes in Southeast Asia, and are both listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Though these fishes were once found throughout Southeast Asia, the Mekong basin is the last remaining location of relatively robust populations. Jullien’s Golden Carp were reported as “extremely abundant” in the Mekong as recently as 1989, but both species are believed to have declined by more than 50% throughout their ranges (Baird 2011, Hogan and Baird 2011). Historical reports tell of these fish reaching a hefty 60 kg (132 pounds); however, individuals caught in recent years weigh in closer to 20 kg (44 pounds) (Hogan and Baird 2011).

A number of factors have likely contributed to these fishes’ decline, including alterations to their freshwater habitat and increased gill net fishing. Despite their international conservation status, demand for these favorite food fishes remains high: their large size and succulent flesh make them highly sought after. While fishers catch individuals of all sizes, the larger bodied specimens are the most commercially valuable, and egg-bearing females fetch the highest prices at market. Because of the higher value of breeding fish, fishers in northern Lao PDR target the spawning areas of these fishes during the December-February spawning season, using large-mesh gill nets designed to catch Probarbus species. Harvesting fish before they can reproduce has had devastating effects on their populations. Dams pose another concern, as they may impede movement to spawning grounds. Adult fish need deep pool habitats, but cannot reproduce in reservoirs (Baird 2006).

In addition to their IUCN Red List endangered classification, both species of Probarbus are ostensibly protected under Lao fisheries law, which allows for local consumption of the species outside of their spawning season, but prohibits their sale (Baird 2006). Despite this, large individuals of both species are regularly seen in markets in district and provincial capitals. FISHBIO staff observed Jullien’s Golden Carp for sale in Lao PDR at a large market in the capital of Vientiane, as well as at a remote roadside stall while making a field visit to Bolikhamxay province. Of particular concern, we spotted a mature female fish for sale that was ready to lay eggs (photo above). FISHBIO is currently working to advance the study and conservation of Probarbus populations.

This post featured in our weekly e-newsletter, the Fish Report. You can subscribe to the Fish Report here.

Tags: endangered species, Lao PDR, Mekong fishes

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Mekong Basin

Ant snacks

May 17, 2013

During Southeast Asia’s dry season in January when the mango is ready to fruit, many people in the Mekong region rotate their dinner menu from wild fish to ant eggs. This is especially common for people in Lao PDR who depend on natural resources for food. Ant eggs are predominantly found in wetland areas with many trees or shrubs. Local people are experienced at finding ant nests and collecting the eggs, as well as simple ways to protect themselves from ant bites. After finding an ant nest, they first use the tip of a bamboo branch to check the quality of the nest, making sure the eggs are large and numerous enough to harvest, and have not yet developed into larvae. If the harvester approves of the eggs’ quality, he or she will hold a bamboo basket or water bucket hanging on a stick and shake the ant’s nest until the eggs fall into the basket.

Many ants will also fall into the basket or bucket with the eggs and may try to attack the harvester. One way to thwart them is to shake the basket repeatedly while walking. Another is placing branches into the basket, letting the ants walk on them, then tossing the branches into the bushes. Taking care not to kill the ants will allow them to lay more eggs. Some people who can afford it may buy tapioca powder to help them get rid of the ants. After harvesting the eggs, local people use them to cook various favorite foods, such as snakehead fish soup or leaf tree (Acacia) soup with ant eggs, fish salad with ant eggs, or simply fried ant eggs. Selling surplus harvest at the market can serve as an important source of income, particularly for women, and the eggs can also be used as fishing bait. Although fish are less abundant during the dry season, people can supplement their diet with ant eggs, then switch to harvesting wild mushrooms and bamboo shoots from April to June.

Insects play a vital role in sustaining food security around the world, according to a report recently released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Worldwide, ants and their relatives (wasps and bees) are among the most commonly consumed insects, after beetles and caterpillars. Between 150 and 200 species of insects are consumed in Southeast Asia alone (see Little fishers). Although Westerners largely regard insects with disgust, the report emphasizes that in the rest of the world, insects are not a food of last resort – rather, people eat them by choice for their nutrition and taste. Food can take on many forms for the resourceful.

Tags: food security, insects, Lao PDR

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Mekong Basin, Water Use

Water or beer?

May 3, 2013

Travelers venturing abroad to regions like Southeast Asia will often get this piece of advice: Don’t drink the water. The warning comes with good reason: a number of diseases and illnesses can result from drinking contaminated water. The risk is higher in undeveloped areas, where a host of bacteria, viruses, and amoebas can lurk in water tainted with human or animal waste. Drinking contaminated tap water or eating food washed in it can wreak intestinal inconveniences like traveler’s diarrhea, or inflict more serious ailments like typhoid or Hepatitis A. Although many large Southeast Asian cities have modernized their sanitation and improved their water quality, when we travel in rural areas for our Mekong program, bottled water is usually our safest bet. Or it’s an excuse to sample another bottled beverage, like one of the local beers, and indulge in some cultural exchange.

But when safety is not an issue, a glass of tap water and a glass of beer are far from equal choices when it comes to the amount of resources they take to produce. Water is used throughout the beer making process, from growing hops and barley in the field, to brewing the beer itself, to packaging the bottles. This all adds up to create an item’s water footprint, which is about 20 gallons of water for a single glass of beer. Other drinks also pack hefty water footprints, such as 30 gallons of water for a glass of wine, or 35 gallons of water for a cup of coffee (see more at the Water Footprint Network). Whatever we choose to satisfy our thirst, we usually take a lot for granted about our drink in hand, like its safety or resource use. It’s something to think about before you take a sip.

Tags: travel, water use

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Mekong Basin

Little fishers

April 24, 2013

You’re never too young to start fishing in the Mekong River basin. In places like Lao PDR where people depend on fish and other aquatic animals for subsistence, all the members of a family often need to pitch in to harvest food, regardless of age or gender. During the weekends, rural children usually spend time helping their parents find more food. Scoop nets are a common type of fishing gear that girls and women use, similar to lift nets (See Need a lift?). While visiting Tha Thout village in Khammouane province in central Lao PDR, FISHBIO staff took these photos of children using scoop nets to harvest aquatic insects and larvae. Some girls in this village also collect water bugs with their hands, as shown in this video. When they return home, they will likely use the insects to make food for their parents, either mixing in soup with vegetables or frying them to eat with sticky rice and chili sauce.

Scoops nets are a traditional type of gear developed to fish without harming all aquatic life. People in Tha Thout village believe that the diversity of the aquatic ecosystem would be depleted if they used more modern fishing methods, such as dynamite, electric shockers, or poison, in their local reservoir. The reservoir’s spring water comes from a cave and flows down to a catchment area, providing clean water that villagers use to wash clothes, take baths, use for irrigation, and, of course, fish in. To preserve the balance of natural resources, it helps to fish with a light touch.

Tags: Lao PDR, Subsistence fishing

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Mekong Basin

Mekong Environmental Symposium

March 15, 2013

FISHBIO recently attended the Mekong Environmental Symposium, held March 5-7 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, which gathered governmental decision-makers, scientists, and organizations active in the Mekong Basin region. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the WISDOM Project hosted the event, which brought together researchers studying river ecology, environmental monitoring, hydrology, socio-economics, energy, and climate change. The goal of WISDOM, a collaboration between Vietnamese and German scientists, was to design and implement an online data platform for the Mekong Delta, which contains information from the fields of hydrology, sociology, information technology, and earth observation. The first day of the symposium included the handover of WISDOM to the Vietnamese Government, as well as speeches by representatives from each of the six riparian nations: China, Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The second and third days of the symposium included many presentations in sessions that broadly covered everything from hydropower development and impacts on river ecology, to capacity building, education, and outreach. Many coffee breaks and long lunches were provided to allow the more than 400 participants to mingle and meet new researchers or strengthen existing relationships. Researchers attended from all over the world, reflecting great international interest in the Mekong River basin. Translators were present for the main speeches as well as private coffee-break conversations, further encouraging trans-boundary discussions. Many speakers noted that the United Nations has declared 2013 the “International Year of Water Cooperation;” thus, the symposium seemed well timed to build upon that effort. We thank the organizers for their impressive efforts to bring so many regional researchers together.

FISHBIO gave a presentation on the Mekong Fish Network (MFN) and the MFN Data Bank, a collaborative project with the U.S. Geological Survey. The objective of the talk was to introduce the audience to the new website and Data Bank created for Mekong Basin fisheries researchers, and to begin gathering feedback from researchers on how the network can foster collaboration and communication. The Mekong Environmental Symposium was broad in scope, and many participants came from scientific fields other than fisheries. This gave us an opportunity to reach out to researchers from diverse backgrounds and emphasize the importance of looking for research intersections in the Mekong Basin. We encourage scientists working on hydrology and water quality to consider how their research may relate to those working on fish biodiversity or ecology. As one speaker put it, there is more than one research nexus in the Mekong Basin. There is the commonly cited nexus of food, water, and energy, but another example is the nexus of development, climate, and governance. A diversity of speakers encouraged people to see these links within their own research. Another speaker called for international dialogue, encouraging participants to see the Mekong River as a “channel of communication” to discuss trans-boundary issues and to develop trans-boundary solutions. The Mekong Environmental Symposium provided an excellent opportunity to utilize that channel to communicate about important issues in hydrology, development, climate change, aquatic ecology, food security, and water resources.

Tags: Conferences, Mekong River

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Fish Report, Mekong Basin

New Mekong Fish Network website offers research tools

March 4, 2013

Trying to manage fisheries and coordinate research in a river that flows through a single country is challenging enough–so imagine the challenges surrounding a river that crosses the borders of six countries with six distinct languages. Such is the case of Southeast Asia’s Mekong River, which is home to more than 850 species of fishes that feed an estimated 60 million people, making it one of the most diverse and productive rivers in the world. As the Mekong moves into an uncertain future of regional development and environmental change, coordinated efforts to study and manage its fishes will become all the more imperative.

As part of our international conservation program, FISHBIO has been working in the Mekong region since 2009. FISHBIO staff are currently working to build the Mekong Fish Network (MFN), a platform to improve communication, coordination, and collaboration among researchers in countries across the Lower Mekong Basin, including Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Now, FISHBIO has launched a new website as a tool to serve the Mekong research community. The website (www.mekongfishnetwork.org) serves as a hub for network communication and connects fish scientists and managers to many valuable tools to assist their research.

The MFN website is a direct product of a workshop that FISHBIO staff and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) convened in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in February 2012 to bring together Mekong scientists, government officials, and members of various organizations working in the region. FISHBIO staff developed the website based on feedback from workshop participants about resources that would be most useful for them. The website can be viewed in a variety of languages, and features news stories from across the region, blog posts of network member activities, descriptions and photos of ongoing research projects, a calendar of relevant upcoming meetings and events, and links to recent open-source research publications.

The website also links to the Mekong Fish Network Data Bank, an online data management tool developed in collaboration with the USGS and also launched this month. The Mekong Fish Network Data Bank is a free tool to help Mekong researchers store, manage, and share their data with collaborators in a secure environment, which is currently a challenge for many scientists in the region. The data bank supports one of the Network’s major goals: to implement standardized sampling methods in the various Mekong countries with the aim of achieving cohesive, basin-wide assessments of the fish community. FISHBIO and USGS will continue to develop the main MFN website and data bank to best meet the needs of the Mekong research community.

This post featured in our weekly e-newsletter, the Fish Report. You can subscribe to the Fish Report here.

Tags: data bank, Mekong Fish Network, website

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Angling, Mekong Basin

Urban fishing

February 22, 2013

Fishing in Mekong cities looks a bit different than catching fish in rural villages. During a recent visit to Cambodia to train local researchers (see Makeshift lab), FISHBIO staff spotted some anglers trying their luck along the banks of the Mekong River in the capital city of Phnom Penh. To our surprise, one was ready to slip a cockroach onto his hook to lure ‘em in. Although other animals ususally come to mind when we think of “bait” in the U.S. (see Baitfish), the resourceful use of this hardy pest makes sense in an urban hub of 1.5 million people. Since fish of any size can be used for food, why waste one for bait when there are plenty of scurrying insects that no one would miss? If you’re not squeamish, this looks like more fun than hiring an exterminator.

Tags: Angling, bait, Cambodia, fishing, Mekong River, Relevant Mekong Links

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Mekong Basin

Finger fish by the pile

February 20, 2013

The Mekong River might be famous for its megafishes, like the Mekong giant catfish, but it’s also home to species on the “micro” side of the size scale (see Fat or flat). Strolling through the fish markets of Vientiane, Lao PDR, can show you both ends of the spectrum: arm-(or leg-)length catfish lined up for filleting (see Full service fish market), as well as finger-sized morsels sold by the pile. This dried heap includes two species, shown below. The longer, thinner fish is the Thai river sprat (Clupeichthys aesarnensis), a relative of sardine and herring. The shorter, rounder fish is the iridescent glassy perchlet (Parambassis apogonoides) which appears a bit more colorful when alive. Although the sprat can reach lengths of 7 cm (2.8 in) and the perchlet lengths of 10 cm (3.9 in), even bite-size tidbits like these are fair game to sell and turn into fermented fish paste and fish sauce. This haul of minifish comes from Nam Ngum Reservoir, Lao’s oldest and largest man-made water body. Whether big or small, virtually all fish from the Mekong can be rendered into a meal for the more than 60 million people who depend on the river for food.

Tags: fish consumption, fish market, Lao PDR (Laos), Laos, Mekong fish, Mekong fishery

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Mekong Basin

Lao coffee to go

February 8, 2013

While going about our Mekong work in Lao PDR, we love picking up on cultural details, like this intriguing style of serving coffee complete with a straw and to-go handles. The country’s coffee buzz dates back to the 1920’s, when the French colonists capitalized on the prime coffee growing conditions in the Bolovens Plateau, an elevated region at the southern tip of Laos. Decades of war in the mid 20^th century put a damper on coffee production, but the cash crop has since surged to become Lao’s top agricultural export. And locals have clearly developed a taste for the drink as well.

While coffee represents a French influence, the “to-go” lifestyle may be an import from frenetic American culture. Though all-too familiar with drinks on the run, we were surprised by the unique local twist: a plastic coffee sling. Our best guess is this helps scooter-driving coffee fiends drink on the dash. In the absence of cup holders, since most people in Lao PDR drive motor scooters rather than cars, the plastic handles can easily slip over the handle bars—like other interesting things we’ve seen dangling there (see Frog to go). As handy as the slings look, they would be even better if they were reusable. Plastic trash is serious problem in many parts of the Mekong (see Trawl full of trash), and the throwaway lifestyle of American culture is one trend it would be better not to import.

Tags: coffee, culture, Lao PDR (Laos), plastic

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Mekong Basin

Fresh fish, fresh data

January 30, 2013

What’s a fish surveyor to do when someone beats you to your fishing spot? Researchers from Vietnam’s Can Tho University have learned: if you can’t beat ‘em, buy from ‘em. FISHBIO tagged along while the Vietnamese fish researchers conducted a survey on the Hau River, a tributary in the Mekong River Delta (see The Mekong’s Amazon exotics, Trawl full of trash). The team is trying to document the fish diversity of the region and study how fish composition changes with the seasons. FISHBIO is working to standardize sampling in the Vietnamese section of the Mekong with our fish sampling of the river in Lao PDR.

The Can Tho University team hires local fishers to use their gear for the surveys (see Small-scale trawl). With so many fishers scooping nets through the same stretch of water, some overlap is bound to occur. We pulled up to one of the scientists’ regular sampling locations just in time to see a fisherman haul in his catch. He had effectively just sampled the area and removed the fish, so we pulled our boat alongside and the researchers asked to buy his catch. The transaction went smoothly, and probably didn’t hurt that it was a family affair: the man happened to be the grandfather-in-law of the fisherman driving our own boat. In their quest to characterize the region’s fish species diversity, the research team regularly buys fish from boats on the water and surveys the catch in local markets. They take fish specimens from the river and markets back to their lab for identification and genetic work. It seems that even when doing scientific fieldwork, it pays to have some cash on hand.

Tags: Mekong Delta, Mekong fishing, Mekong River Basin, Relevant Mekong Links, Vietnam

Living treasure: Jullien’s golden carp

Ant snacks

Water or beer?

Little fishers

Mekong Environmental Symposium

New Mekong Fish Network website offers research tools

Urban fishing

Finger fish by the pile

Lao coffee to go

Fresh fish, fresh data

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