Monthly Archives: July 2009

Went fishing wrote book

Among the most tragic of events in this world and our times are the deforestation and destruction of the world’s tropical rain forests, along with the conversion of the entire Amazon basin into temporary cattle ranching and soy bean plantations, South East Asia into margarine palms to tickle the well-being of health fanatics. And along with that cultures, languages, animals, and plants of immense significance for humanity and the well-being of the planet. It is an unbelievable erosion of capital, and a straight road to future devastation for the concerned countries. Just like we now also experience the demise of the oceans, and the loss of most natural biodiversity rich habitats already happened in North America, Europe, northern Asia, and much of Africa.

Fortunately, we have the stories of those who were there, and the future will be able to sense from their writings the irrational passion of fish collection and jungle exploration, and at the same time the close encounter with the meaning of life.

Iténez – River of Hope (English edition 2009) is the story of Amanda Bleher (1910-1991), a middle age, newly divorced woman in Frankfurt/Main, in the 1950s, running a pet business, earning her considerable reputation not least for importing snakes and crocodiles, a female Indiana Jones as e-jardim has it. The story focuses on her travel to Brazil in search of the discus fish (Symphysodon). Attempting to bring an American car from Germany, laden with four kids, pets, and all sorts of belongings, not least cosmetics, it is a road story with a lesser local vehicle of considerable inconvenience. Of course, there are no discus where she goes, heading for the Rio Iténez (Guaporé) on the border between Brazil and Bolivia. Love, trust, money, belongings, and belief in humanity evaporate along the way. Reaching the old Jesuit mission Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade on the Iténez (Guaporé) River, there is considerable suffering in the tropical paradise, and with no money left, kids ill, and dubious friends failing, the dream of the Iténez has to be put back for realities for a while. Amanda eventually established a home and company near Rio, and travelled extensively afterwards, but this is the story you will want to read.

To a rational mind planning a field trip, these 277 pages of continuous impulsive re-planning on the way may be frustrating. Why is she taking the kids? Why this amount of cosmetics in the interior of Mato Grosso? Why not check out the taxonomic literature for Symphysodon localities (Amazon mainstream)? Why follow the one after the other jungle whacko so desperately? Nonetheless, this is a fascinating story of travelling in the rain forest in those days when there was forest in Mato Grosso. It is a woman’s story, and thus different from male itineraries. It does not obviously have a hero (or heroine), and it is very truthful of all those things that go wrong, all those decisions that were not so smart it turns out, that the other stories never tell. It is also a rare verdict of passion, for the animals, plants, the rain forest itself, and the search for a new existence far away from war-stricken Germany. Was Amanda Bleher a spy sent by the Germans to check out the almost-deserted Vila Bela as Brazilians at times seemed to think? Is this book her coded report back? Besides the elusive discus, Amanda Bleher was mainly interested in getting water plants for aquariums, and this book gives a vivid insight into the early days of exploration of the Amazon for aquarium fishes and plants.

Most of the history of exploration and travel is written by men. My bookshelves are laden with volumes by men discovering, exploring, and doing everything right. When I travel, it is never like that, it is always chaotic and frustrating all the time. The classical volumes of Ferreira, Humboldt and Bonpland, Castelnau, and Spix and von Martius, to mention the well-known, are faithful diaries, and there is much fact and information therein. But as literature they are boring.


There is one exceptional exception — Gordon MacCreagh’s (1886-1953) White Waters and Black (1926). It details about the Mulford Expedition 1921-1922, of six inexperienced scientists (Nathan E Pearson the ichthyologist) travelling from the highlands of Bolivia to Manaus and up the Rio Negro, with eight tons of luggage and no very clear mission. Well, the expeditioners as well as the luggage are reduced as the group proceeds, over two years’ time, and the bare truth and everything ridiculous and tragic is retold by the guide, MacCreagh, working under premises like this and worse:

The Minister of the Interior lays before me all his maps — wonderful charts showing a Yungas dotted with prosperous little towns. The Department of the Yungas, by the way, is the transandine sub-tropical and tropical jungle which, with the Department of the Beni, stretches away off to the far borders of Brazil.
“Who lives in these towns?” I ask the minister.
He is delightfully naïve about his ignorance. “Quien sabe? Perhaps Indians, perhaps fugitives from justice. At all events, they are people who pay no taxes.”
How, then, does he know that the towns are there?
He doesn’t. He shrugs with comical disgust and laughs.
“But, my good friend, I am not a maker of maps!”

I would not consider bringing 50 kg of oatmeal in glass jars on trail and river from La Paz to Manaus. But perhaps cooking pots, lanterns, if I bring an outboard motor I would make sure there were gasoline for it, and of course scientific equipment. In White Waters and Black, you can read more about what to take and not to take.

Women rarely go on expeditions, or they don’t write. Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz (1822-1907) was an early exception, documenting the Thayer expedition to the Amazon (186-1867) led by her husband Louis Agassiz, but it is also a relatively dry itinerary interspersed with exclamative footnotes by Louis Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (1868).

Much more I appreciated Lady with a Spear (1951) by Eugenie Clark, an autobiography full of passion for collecting fish, part of the story of the post war atom bomb testing in the Marianas, and also testimony to the importance of having an aquarium in every home with children.

A remarkable early explorer, the British Mary Kingsley (1862-1900), made two trips to West Africa in the late 19th Century, at a time when Europeans had less chances of surviving the diseases there. She came back to England, and came back with fishes as well, and wrote a book. In the introduction to Travels in West Africa (1897) she wrote:

To Dr. Günther, of the British Museum, I am deeply grateful for the kindness and interest he has always shown regarding all the specimens of natural history that I have been able to lay before him; the majority of which must have had very old tales to tell him. Yet his courtesy and attention gave me the thing a worker in any work most wants — the sense that the work was worth doing — and sent me back to work again with the knowledge that if these things interested a man like him, it was a more than sufficient reason for me to go on collecting them.

That is a very kind acknowledgment, and Mary must have been a very nice person, who also made headlines when defending Africans and African cultures against Christan demonisation. Mary collected fish in the Ogowe River, and has some species named after her in recognition of her contribution to ichthyology. She worked all alone and on her own expense. I find that remarkable, given the obvious hardships, the absence of cars, roads, airplanes, air-condition, and bottled water that present-day explorers make good use of. Travels in West Africa is old enough to be in the public domain and can be downloaded from various sources such as Google Books.

If you do not write down your story, it never happened.

All books here are available from Amazon and other Internet books shops, except Iténez – River of Hope, to be ordered from AquaPress. Image Sven Kullander, CC-BY-NC.

Behind the scenes in Ichthyology

It is true that most of the world’s population lives some distance away from a major natural history museum. Even if you live close and come often to visit the exhibits, what you experience is only a minor part of the activity, the objects and the spirits of a natural history “museum” (better called science collections or research collections). Only a fraction of the millions of objects are on display, and nearly all of the research and curation is out of sight.

Lack of public access to collections and research areas is sometimes lamented by the public, and in response to that some scientific collections do provide guided tours of the galleries for those with a special interest. With the right guide it can be exciting, but expect that for the non-specialist research collections tend to be highly repetitive, with large numbers of seemingly identical objects, and storage conditions are optimised for long-term storage and not for easy access for viewing. The researchers and collections staff are of course not on display. They have to work on, eternally understaffed, with their task to investigate and maintain the collections. Many scientific collections provide good insight into the research going on by public lectures and content-rich web sites. Projects like FishBase and GBIF make data and specimens from many collections available from their portals.

On occasion of the tricentennial of the birth of Petrus Artedi (1705-1735), Elizabeth Watson, Node Manager at GBIF-Sweden, made a film illustrating the change of scientific ichthyology from the lone man in the 18th Century taking notes by the lake to the industrial process including all sorts of technology and a rather large number of people that make Ichthyology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, one of the major natural science collections in Europe.

One of the blessings of the Internet (in this case YouTube in particular) is that everyone with a reasonable bandwidth can now get behind the scenes in Ichthyology, in a shorter version of the Artedi film, illustrating the work of today.

Click image to play film

Frying tilapia

Fresh tilapia. Yunnan, 1995

Prompted by reactions to an earlier post, here is the only fish recipe I have: fried fish. Not at all like deep-fried fish in fish’n chips, but could be a milanesa de pescado. This post is particularly suitable for all who do not know how to cook and need a very simple dish that is guaranteed to make a great meal. It works with most acanthomorphs, needing firm flesh; avoid cypriniforms an clupeiforms. First time I tried this procedure was in Lusaka, Zambia, with Oreochromis andersonii, probably the best tasting tilapia species, but should work with any tilapia anywhere.

In addition to fish fillets, you need 2-3 eggs, whisked to homogeneous liquid, about 2 dl of dried breadcrumbs, some salt, pepper if you like. Tilapia, cod, and many other fish do quite well without spices, but salt is recommended. Mix the salt with the breadcrumbs, do not apply on the fish. One kilo of fish is more than enough for a whole family of four.

1. Thaw the package. Takes the whole day, unless you use the defrost option of the microwave oven.


Thawed tilapia fillets

Whisked eggs


Breadcrumbs with some salt in

2. Immerse each fillet in the whisked egg.

3. Cover the fillet with breadcrumbs.

4. Repeat 2-3 for each fillet, until you have a nice pile.


Starting to look like something


5. Locate oven, frying pan, and cooking oil/margarine (but butter is better). Heat the pan to about medium (6 on a scale to 10), apply oil to cover bottom of pan.

6. Put in 2 larger or 3 smaller fillets in the pan, leave for about two minutes or until a soft golden (not brown), then turn and fry on the other side and keep turning until both sides nicely golden. The cover absorbs the oil, so you probably need to add some for every turn.

7. Repeat 6 until all fillets fried.


Golden, golden, fried tilapia

8. Serve with rice, potatoes, or whatever you like. Real men don’t eat tomatoes, though. Eat fresh. Re-heated it will be rather dry; restaurants usually mask dry fish with some sauce.

All images Sven O Kullander, CC-BY-NC

Fishes down under. The postscript

The salamander fish that I accompanied Heiko Bleher to search for (earlier post), has now hit the movies. Heiko uploaded his video sequence to youtube, and you can see it here as well. This little Western Australian endemic, Lepidogalaxias salamandroides, member of the smelt order, the Osmeriformes, is the only fish that can bend its neck. Furthermore, it sort of walks, somewhat Charlie Chaplin gait, but nevertheless, the fish is walking on the bottom using its pelvic fins (most walking fish use the pectoral fins as limbs). The salamander fish lives in pools with highly acidic black water that dry up seasonally, and it aestivates in burrows in the bottom of the pools. It gives us a glimpse of the extreme fish and habitats that may have been the start of the tetrapods (but the salamander fish was not there then). Having a neck is one of the main characters to distinguish tetrapods from fish (but paleontologists studying fish-tetrapod transition don’t know about the salamander fish).

Heiko has more images of the fish on his AquaPress website

Chinese fish dishes

After a little like a week with family and friends in China, the image gallery consists not so much of fish. We passed through some food departments in malls, including enjoying a fish burger at KFC in Hefei that was excellently spicy, said to be from pike, but was perhaps not a fish dish.


Chinese largemouth bass before
Photo: Sven O Kullander, CC-NC-BY


Chinese largemouth bass after
Photo: Sven O Kullander, CC-NC-BY

My brother in law, Cheng Hua, is an excellent cook, and he prepared both catfish (Pelteobagrus) and largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). I had my first noodlefish soup (that I can remember) and also noodlefish (Salanx chinensis?) topping a light omelette, and oven-baked Siniperca, as well as deepfried Sillago; witness also the split-head big-head carp head (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis). Freshwater fish generally do not taste much, and especially cyprinids tend to be of loose consistency. The trick is to marinate and prepare the fish whole (gutted, and gill-arches removed).

Split-head big-head carp head under peppers
Photo: Sven O Kullander, CC-NC-BY

Noodlefish soup
Photo: Sven O Kullander, CC-NC-BY

Shark fins? No, I have memories of boxes of shark fins from earlier visits, but this time did not see any. Perhaps a good sign, but shark fins were never cheap. Shark fin soup is excellent treat, but nothing humanity cannot live without. Thick chicken soup is equally fine. Perhaps, if chicken were to have their wings and feet cut off and still living bodies thrown to rot on the ground, chicken soup might take up competition of delicacy – or not? There will never be any shark farms to produce shark fins for soup.

So, what fish were we eating in China then. Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) from North America, tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus, and O. aureus) from Africa, and pacu (Piaractus brachypomus) from South America, are very common. Traditional and new aquaculture species such as the bighead, silver, black, and grass carps (Hypopthalmichthys nobilis, H. molitrix, Mylopharyngodon piceus, Ctenopharyngodon idella), the common carp (Cyprinus haematopterus), the catfish Silurus asotus, swampeel (Monopterus albus) (a favored fish on this blog), and weatherfish (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus), are of course still common.

Swampeel by the dozen. Hefei food mall.
Photo: Sven O Kullander, CC-NC-BY

Chinese aquaculture strategy seems to be expand on cultured biodiversity rather than improving or adapting species already in culture. Not very different from the rest of the world, except that, interestingly, the rest of the world mostly did not have aquaculture traditions, and only one of the traditional Chinese aquaculture species has been globally adopted, i.e., the “common carp”. With the reservation that the carp cultivated in Europe is the local species Cyprinus carpio, whereas the Chinese redfin carp Cyprinus haematopterus is only almost the same. These two species have been dispersed worldwide by fisheries people totally ignorant of what species they have been dealing with.


Carp in a bucket. Yunnan 1995
Photo: Sven O Kullander. CC-BY-NC

But I have to admit, at home, frozen tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) imported from China, is a favorite dish. Tilapia is excellent meat. Is is not weird to eat, in Europe, African fish produced in China? And most weird of all: Why do the swedes, with all their water, eat aquaculture fish from the other side of Eurasia. When it comes to aquaculture, nothing makes sense.