Photo by: L. Brian Stauffer.

‘A species of giant crayfish native to Tennessee in the United States has been scientifically described and given the name Barbicambarus simmonis.

Barbicambarus simmonis can reach a size of at least 5 inches (12,5 cm) which is twice the size of an average North American crayfish.

The researchers behind the paper in which Barbicambarus simmonis was described are Christopher Taylor from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Guenter Schuster from Eastern Kentucky University.

The first specimen was found by Tennessee Valley Authority scientist Jeffrey Simmons in 2010, and that is why the species bears his name. This specimen, as well as the specimen encountered by Taylor and Schuster, lived in Shoal Creek, a stream in southern Tennessee that ultimately drains into the Tennessee River. The creek has attracted the attention of researchers for at least half a century, which makes it reasonable to assume that Barbicambarus simmonis is either rare or very difficult to find.

You can find out more about Barbicambarus simmonis in the paper “Monotypic no more, a description of a new crayfish of the genus Barbicambarus Hobbs, 1969 (Decapoda: Cambaridae) from the Tennessee River drainage using morphology and molecules”  published in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

Barbicambarus simmonsi

Barbicambarus is a genus of freshwater crayfish that up until now had only one member: Barbicambarus cornutus. Barbicambarus cornutus is known only from the Barren River and Green River systems of Tennessee. The largest known specimens are 23 cm (9 inches) long, so this crayfish is even larger than Barbicambarus simmonis and one of the largest species of crayfish in North America*. It was scientifically described in 1884, but not seen again by scientists until the 1960s.

North America is rich in crayfish and also a comparatively well explored part of the world. Of the roughly 600 scientifically described species of crayfish, roughly 50% are native to North America. However, even though North America is such a well surveyed part of the world, new species are regularly described by scientists. The Pearl Map Turtle, Graptemys pearlensis, was for instance described in the summer of 2010. Just like Barbicambarus simmonis, this turtle is native to the southern part of the U.S. It lives in the Pearl River in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Danube

The very first dead fish have been discovered in the Danube, the second largest river in Europe, after an environmental mishap left toxic mud flowing from Hungary. A regional chief for the disaster relief services made the following comment to the AFP this past Thursday:

“I can confirm that we have seen sporadic losses of fish in the main branch of the Danube,” Tibor Dobson commented.

“The fish have been sighted at the confluence of the Raba with the Danube,” where water samples had shown a pH value of 9.1, he continued..

“Fish cannot survive at pH 9.1,” he added.

The alkalinity of the water is a measure of just how contaminated a body of water is. The values go from one to fourteen, pH levels of between one and six are considered acid, a reading of six to eight is neutral, and anything from eight to fourteen are alkaline.
“In order to save the river’s ecosystem, the pH level must be brought down to below 8,” Dobson explained.

When the toxic spill first happened this past Monday afternoon, the reading taken in the Torna river nearby were thirteen point five, in other words catastrophic.

The small Torna stream flows to the Marcal, which is a tributary of the Raba, and this then flows to the Danube.

The pH levels ascertained from the Torna this past Thursday showed about 10, so while it is not good yet, it appears that, given the time, mother nature will straighten itself out. However, in the mean time, the local ecosystem will take a huge hit.

Sounds weird? If so you haven´t heard about the ”fish mail box” in Inada Park, Kawasaki, Tama River in Japan near Tokyo. The ”fish mail box” is a 7 meter by 4 meter large concrete water tank that have been placed along the river to give people a place to drop unwanted fish. The goal of the fish box is to prevent people from releasing fish into the river, since foreign species can wreck havoc with local ecosystems.

People are encourage to call before they drop off their pets as fish can die from the shock if not acclimatized correctly, but it is is permitted to just drop off fish as well. People are also encouraged to drop off tropical invasive species they catch in the river in the fish box.

The fish left in these fish boxes are cared for by Mitsuaki Yamasaki, 51, the head of a local river fish association, before they are placed in new homes. The box is receiving about 10,000 fish a year ranging from small fish to large gars.

The Tama River has seen a lot of new species released in it in recent years during which the aquarium hobby has become even more popular in Japan than before. This has in no small part to do with the movie “Finding Nemo”, even if the increase in popularity started before the movie was released. More than 200 species of foreign tropical fish have been found in the Tama River ranging from typical aquarium fish such as guppies and angelfish to less frequently kept creatures like piranhas and arowanas, earning it the nick name the Tamazon River. Some of the tropical species have established breeding populations while others haven´t, but most species can survive the winters by staying near water treatment areas along the river.

Mitsuaki Yamasaki and other members of the local river fish association are afraid that breeding populations of gars will establish themselves in the river since more and more gars are sold and they have been found in the river. Gar species are predatory fish that could have a severe negative impact on native fish such as sweetfish . Gars are likely able to establish breeding populations in a river with the conditions of the Tama River.

It can not be denied that with over 10,000 fish received by one of these fish boxes since it opened the initiative could aid the struggle to prevent invasive species from getting a foothold in local waters, and it might be an idea that deserves being tried in other problems areas around the world, such as Florida. The only question is if projects like this could work with out the devotion and support from people like Mitsuaki Yamasaki, people who are really passionate about what they do.

Any one interested in or planning to start a similar project somewhere else is very welcome to contact us here at AquaticCommunity as we would love to document your work getting the project of the ground and running it. Leave a comment in the commentary field or send an e-mail to admin@aquaticcommunity.com.

Fancy, a four-year-old Chihuahua, survived for more than 24 hours under water after being left inside a capsized riverboat. She was onboard a houseboat that sunk in the river near Toledo, USA after hitting a stump.

As the 44 foot houseboat went under, none of the four passengers remembered to take the Chihuahua with them to dry land. When she was missed, they thought it was too late to save her and didn’t return to the wreck until 24 hours.

But Fancy wasn’t dead, she was stuck in an air-pocket with her body – but not her head – submerged under water.

“Over to my right side I heard her little feet go too,too, too, too. I was almost like a whale going offthe side of the boat,” said Rebel Barrett, the owner of the dog. “I just got in the water and I grabbed her and I was crying, and screaming, and hugging her and kissing her and shewas happy to see her mama.”

The owner of the houseboat, who happened to be a scuba diver, went down and rescued Fancy from the air wreck.

“I just turned my head slightly, and I looked in and I saw her sitting there with her head on her paws, just shaking and quivering,” said the astounded boat owner. “The air pocket was maybe two or three inches, just a little bitty pocket, but she was sittin up there in it. It’s a miracle.”

Specimens of the invasive Blue catfish (Ictalurus furcatus) have now grown large enough to reach the top of the food chain in James River, Virginia. A catfish weighing 102 lbs (46 kg) was caught from the river not long ago; the largest caught freshwater fish ever to be reported from Virginian waters.

30 years ago, Blue catfish was deliberately introduced to this U.S. river as a game fish. During recent years, the catfish population has grown explosively while many other fish species have decreased. An eight year old Blue catfish normally weigh a mere 4 lbs (1.8 kg), but as soon as it gets large enough to start catching other fish and devouring fully grown crabs, it begins putting on weight at a rapid pace and can gain as much as 10 lbs (4.5 kg) a year.

Blue Catfish – Ictalurus furcatus. Copyright www.jjphoto.dk

According to Bob Greenlee, a biologist with the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, scientists doing sampling used to get around 1,500 catfish in an hour in this river in the 1990s. Today, this number has increased to 6,000. “We have an invasive species that is taking over the ecosystem,” says Rob Latour, a marine biologist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary.

Acesulfame K passes through the human body into wastewater, survives water treatment and accumulates in groundwater, Swiss researchers have found.

Acesulfame K turned out to be much more resilient towards treatment than saccharin, sucralose, and cyclamate – three other popular and commonly used artificial sweeteners.

The scientists tested tap water, urban groundwater, and both treated and untreated water samples from 10 different wastewater treatment plants. They also collected water samples from four rivers and eight lakes near Zurich and from a remote alpine lake.

In the untreated wastewaters, they could detect the presence of all four sweeteners (acesulfame K, saccharin, sucralose, and cyclamate), but in treated water 90% of saccharine and 99% of cyclamate were eliminated. Sucralose withstood treatment somewhat better, but the concentrations were still small. Surprisingly enough, acesulfame K proved much more resilient towards treatment and the equivalent of 10 milligrams per person per day could be detected in both untreated and treated waters.

Treated water often end up in lakes and rivers and no one knows whether acesulfame K has any impact on fish or the environment.

“These concentrations are astronomically high,” says Associate Professor Bruce Brownawell, an environmental chemist at Stony Brook University, New York “If I had to guess, this is the highest concentration of a compound that goes through sewage treatment plants without being degraded.”

The research team found no detectable amounts of artificial sweeteners in the remote alpine lake, but in the other rivers and lakes the amount of acesulfame K increase proportionally with nearby human population sizes. Acesulfame could also be detected in 65 of 100 groundwater samples and small amounts of the sweetener were also present in tap water. The levels detected are not considered detrimental to human health and were far too low to change the taste of the water.

The study has been published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology .

A recent study on intersex abnormalities in fish living in the Potomac River watershed carried out by researchers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey showed that at least 82 percent of male smallmouth bass and in 23 percent of the largemouth bass had immature female germ cells (oocytes) in their reproductive organs. This number is even larger than anticipated.

This type of intersex indicates that the fish has been exposed to estrogens or chemicals that mimic the activity of natural hormones. The condition is believed to be caused by hormone-like chemicals, so called endocrine disruptors, found in medicines and a variety of consumer products. Earlier, researchers suspected that the contaminants were entering the Potomac from the wastewater treatment plants that discharge into it, but further sampling showed that the problem existed in areas located upstream from sewage plants as well. Officials are now investigating if multiple chemicals, and not just those from sewage plants, may be responsible. A larger study that includes the entire Potomac River and other East Coast rivers will be launched to find out how widespread the problem actually is.

“At the moment we don’t know the ecological implications of this condition and it could potentially affect the reproductive capability of important sport fish species in the watershed,” said Leopoldo Miranda, Supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chesapeake Bay Field Office.

The Potomac River is the fourth largest river along the Atlantic coast of the USA (in terms of area), with a length of approximately 665 km (383 statute miles) and a drainage area of roughly 38,000 km² (14,700 square miles). It flows into the Chesapeake Bay along the mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S. The river is shared by West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and District of Columbia, and all of Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital city, lies within the Potomac watershed.

More information is available in the Intersex fact sheet released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chesapeake Bay Field Office.

A new species of catfish belonging to the genus Lithogenes has been described by ichthyologists Scott Schaefer and Francisco Provenzano in a recent issue of the journal American Museum Novitates[1].

The new fish has been given the name Lithogenes wahari, after Ruá-Wahari, the Piaroapeople’s God of Creation[2]. The species is known from the Cuao River, a part of the Orinoco River drainage, where it inhabits clear and swift forest streams with exposed bedrock substratum. It was actually collected over 20 years ago by anthropologist Stanford Zent, but it would take until 2001 before the fish was found again by Scott Schaefer and Francisco Provenzano.

Lithogenes wahari is the third scientifically described member of the small genus Lithogenes and can be distinguished from its two close relatives by the absence of odontodes on the proximal portion of the ventral surface of the first pelvic-fin ray, the lack of accessory premaxillary teeth, the extensive ridges present on the thickened skin of the pelvic pad, and the intense pigment band that runs along the base of the anal fin. There is also a diffuse spot located midlength on the anal fin rays.

Interestingly enough, the new information on this Lithogenes member has led ichthyologists to suggest that the common ancestor of the Loricariidae and Astroblepidae was a fish capable of climbing rocks by grasping them with its mouth and pelvic fins.

Picture here

The yearly manatee count revealed a record number of manatees this year. The survey counted 3807 manatees which is about 500 more than the previous record from 2001.

Manatee with calf

Experts do however say that it is too early to cheer and that one shouldn’t read too much into this as this year offered ideal conditions for spotting manatees. Cold temperatures made the manatees gather in warm clear waters around nuclear power plants and natural springs making them easy to spot. The previous record year 2001 – when about 1000 more manatees were counted than the year before and the year after – also offered similar conditions. It is important to remember that the count doesn’t reflect the actual number of manatees but rather a minimum number of manatees as not all of them can be found and counted.

Wildlife managers and manatee advocates do however call the number encouraging and say that it might indicate that the manatee population is slowly recovering as the number is higher then the numbers the previous record year. They say that the count supports population models suggesting manatees are increasing in Northwest Florida, along the Atlantic Coast and on the upper St. Johns River. Pat Rose, executive director of the “Save The Manatee Club” does however add that the numbers in Southwest Florida and the Everglades, home to about 40 percent of all manatees in Florida, are believed to be in continuing decline. Data on this region is however much more scare as it is hard to keep track on the animals in the dark waters found in this area.

Considering that scientists earlier estimated the manatee population in all of Florida to be below 1500 animals it can only be concluded that the conservation process have been a success and with 3807 animals it seems clear that the situation is much better than it once were, even if there still is much work to do to protect these gentle giants.

This post will introduce a number of new catfish species, a couple of tetras and an a few cichlid species.

Let’s start with the cichlid species. The species known as Apistogramma sp Mamore have been scientifically described by Wolfgang Staeck and Ingo Schindler and named A. erythrura. It is a small species and the largest speciemen that have been found so far was 30.8 mm SL. (just over 1.2 inch). It seems to feed on small invertebrates. Thy can be found in waters with the following conditions pH 5.2–6.4; electrical conductivity <10–20 μS/cm; total and temporary hardness < l°dH; water temperature 25.1–31.0°C. They are cave spawners and can be bred in aquariums. The male guards a territory which can contain several females. The females guard the fry.

Scientists Felipe Ottoni and Wilson Costa from Brazil have in the latest issue of the journal Vertebrate Zoology described nine new species of Australoheros cichlids from southern Brazil[1].

Australoheros autrani, A. Barbosae, A. ipatinguensis, A. macacuensis, A. muriae, A. paraibae, A.s robustus, A. saquarema

New tetras

Two new species of flag tetra have been described[2]. Both species originates in Venezuela. The new species Hyphessobrycon paucilepis and H. tuyensis was described by Carlos García-Alzate, César Román-Valencia and Donald Taphorn in the latest issue of the journal Vertebrate Zoology. At the same time they recognize three other valid species: H. diancistrus, H. fernandezi and H. sovichthys.

Hyphessobrycon paucilepis originates from the small drainages in Lara state, northern Venezuela. H. tuyensis from the Tuy River drainage in northern Venezuela

New catfish species

Brazilian scientists Héctor Alcaraz, Weferson da Graça and Oscar Shibatta have in the latest issue of the journal Neotropical Ichthyology named a new species of bumblebee catfish from Paraguay Microglanis carlae as attribute to ichthyologist Carla Pavanelli[3]. The species is found in moderately fast flowing water in Paraguay River drainage.

Brazilian ichthyologists Luisa Sarmento-Soares and Ronaldo Martins-Pinheiro have described three new Tatia species bringing the total number of described species up to twelve[4]. The three new species described are T. caxiuanensis (named after the Floresta Nacional de Caxiuanã.), T. meesi (named after Gerloff Mees) and T. nigra (named after its dark color)

T. caxiuanensis is found in the Floresta Nacional de Caxiuanã, T. meesi in Essequibo River drainage in Guyana and T. nigra in the Uatumã and Trombetas river drainages.

Marcelo Rocha, Renildo de Oliveira and Lúcia Py-Daniel have described a new Gladioglanis catfish, Gladioglanis anacanthus, which can be found in the Aripuanã River in central Brazil[5].

Lúcia Py-Daniel and Ilana Fichberg have described a new whiptail catfish, Rineloricaria daraha. This new species is found in the Rio Daráa in the Rio Negro drainage which have given the species its name[6].