Well, this is certainly interesting news. It appears that a two-headed turtle (Picture gallery) has gripped the attention of Phuket, and may turn into a full blow two-headed turtle mania if the media coverage is any indication.

The Royal Thai Navy has created a contest to help come up with a suitable name for the 18-day old turtle, which really created a stir when it was put on display in the turtle sanctuary at the Navy base in Tablamu, just to the north of Phuket.

Chatjen Choipean, a warrant officer who is in charge of many functions at the Navy hatchery beach at Hu Young Island in the Similans has commented that the two-headed turtle was the last in a batch of 26 turtles to hatch from the laying of 96 eggs. Turtles often lay there eggs on the beach between November and February.

This Olive Ridley turtle, officials are keeping their fingers crossed, may just do the same thing for Phuket and other turtles that a young panda has done for the Chinang Mai Zoo.

Last year, Warrant officer Chatjen explained, there were 80 separate nests made and eggs laid on the island. However, so far this year, there have only been 30.

”The young two-headed turtle is very strong and doing well,” he commented. This is the first time that a two-headed turtle has made an appearance in the Navy region, and many hope that it is a sign of good luck for the breeding attempts in the future, especially on the mainland and Phuket.

Visitors are encouraged to view the turtle at Tablamu, where they can also take advantage of one of the best golf courses in the area, and engage in one of many of the activities available in the surrounding Phang Nga countryside.

It is not known whether the two-headed turtle is male or female, and it could take up to 5 years to discover which it is, however, this will have no bearing on the decision of a name.

The wild stock of the Mekong giant catfish are going to be driven to extinction if the hydropower dams planned for construction in the Mekong River get the go ahead, says a report recently released by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund)

The report, which was titled “River of Giants: Giant Fish of the Mekong”, writes on four of these giant catfish which make their home in the Mekong. They rank in the top 10 of biggest freshwater fish in the entire world. The Mekong River’s Giant freshwater stingray can be half the length of a bus, and weigh in at somewhere around 1,300 pounds and currently holds the title for world’s biggest freshwater fish. However, the Mekong giant catfish, now listed as critically endangered, ranks third being almost 10 feet long and weighs in at around 771 pounds.

The hydropower dam which is supposed to be constructed on the Mekong River at Sayabouly Province, northern Laos, is a serious threat to the survival of the wild stock of this magnificent catfish.

“A fish the size of a Mekong giant catfish cannot swim across a large barrier like the Sayabouly dam to reach its spawning grounds upstream,” explained the Director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Program, Dekila Chungyalpa, “Building this and other dams will lead to the collapse of the wild population of this iconic species.”

One can only hope that they put a stopper in this plan to dam up their home, and cause strife for this majestic animal.

Indonesia is getting ready to sink foreign boats carrying out illegal fishing in Indonesian waters.

“We are glad the House`s Commission IV supports us in this,” Marine Resources and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numbery said at a meeting with the House commission this week.

Numbery says firm action is needed to deter foreign boats from continuing to poach, and that his office and the parliament were currently revising the law on marine resources with regard to dealing with crimes in the seas.

Elviana, a member of Commission IV, agreed with the minister and said that firm actions needed to be implemented immediately to deter foreign parties intending to steal fish from Indonesian waters.

“Tuna fish sells well so that many foreign fishermen are venturing into the country’s waters“, she said. “This must not be allowed to continue.”

Earlier, Indonesian authorities have seized illegal fishing boats and auctioned them out, but this system seems to have been ineffective.

“It is believed auctions have been arranged to ensure that the boats can be sold to their owners who are also the suspects,” Elviana said, adding that illegal boats such as from Thailand still continued operating in a great number.

The Top 10 list of new species from 2008 has now been compiled by the ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists. Last year, thousands of new species were described by science, many of them native to hard-to-access regions of our planet, such as remote tropical areas or deep sea habitats, but two of the species on the list actually hail from much less exotic locations: Cardiff and a bottle of hairspray.

“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, which announced the top 10 new species list. “We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted“.

These are the selected few that made it all the way to the ASU Top 10:

1.) A palm with no close relatives in the neighbourhood

Name: Tahina spectabilis
Common Name: Tahina Palm

This plant produces truly spectacular inflorescence with numerous flowers. After fruiting, the palm dies and collapses. Strangely enough, the genus Tahina is not closely related to any of the other 170+ palm species found on Madagascar. Its closest relatives are instead found in Afghanistan, Thailand, Vietnam and China.

Soon after the publication of the species, seeds were disseminated throughout the palm grower community, raising money for its conservation by the local villagers.

2.) The world’s longest known living insect

Name: Phobaeticus chani
Common Name: This insect has no common name in English. Perhaps Chani’s stick insect would be a suitable English common name? Do any of the readers of this blog know if this species has a common name in Malaysia?

With a body length of 35.6 cm (14 inches) and an overall length of 56.7 cm (22.3 inches), Phobaeticus chani is the world’s longest known now living insect. Once upon a time, insects grew much larger than this, but none of those gigantic insects have survived into our time.

3.) The world’s smallest seahorse

Name: Hippocampus satomiae
Common Name: Satomi’s Pygmy Seahorse

This is the smallest known seahorse in the world. It has a standard length of no more than 13.8mm (0.54 inches) and an approximate height of 11.5mm (0.45 inches).

4.) The world’s smallest snake

Name: Leptotyphlops carlae
Common Name: Barbados Threadsnake

This is the world’s smallest snake with a total length of 104 mm (4.1 inches).

5.) A Welsh ghost slug

Name: Selenochlamys ysbryda
Common Name: Ghost Slug

The word ysbryda is a Latinized version of the Welsh word ysbryd which means ghost or spirit. The name alludes to the species’ ghostly appearance, nocturnal, predatory behaviour and the element of mystery surrounding its origin. Strangely enough, this new species was discovered in Cardiff, UK, a well-collected and densely populated part of the world. (For all the Torchwood fans out there, this mesmerizing find naturally comes as no surprise.)

6.) A snail with a surprising twist

Name: Opisthostoma vermiculum
Common Name: This species has no common name in English. Do any of the readers of this blog know it has a common name in Malaysia?

Most gastropod shells tightly coil according to a logarithmic spiral and have an upper limit of three coiling axes, but the shell of Opisthostoma vermiculum consists of four different coiling axes which is the highest number ever seen in gastropods. As if this wasn’t enough, the shell whorls detach three times and reattach twice to preceding whorls in a fairly consistent manner, which suggests that the coiling strategy is under some form of strict developmental-gene control.

7.) Deep-blue deep-dweller

Name: Chromis abyssus
Common Name: Deep Blue Chromis

Compared to other members of its genus, the deep blue Chromis abyssus lives pretty far from the surface but it is certainly not found at abyssal depths. The name is instead a reference to the BBC documentary Pacific Abyss, since the type specimen was collected during the making of this show. This species was also the first one to have its description registered in the newly launched taxonomic database Zoobank.

8.) A 380 million year old delivery

Name: Materpiscis attenboroughi
Common Name: Mother Fish

This is the oldest known live bearing (viviparous) vertebrate and we know of it from fossil record only. Amazingly, the fossil shows a female fish in the process of giving birth some 380 million years ago. It was found at Gogo Station in Western Australia. The name of the genus, Materpiscis, means “mother fish” in Latin, while the species itself is named in honour of Sir David Attenborough who first drew attention to the Gogo fish sites in his 1979 series Life on Earth.

9.) African decaf

Name: Coffea charrieriana
Common Name: Charrier Coffee

This is a true member of the genus Coffea, but it is completely void of caffeine. Coffea charrieriana is the first known caffeine-free Coffea species from Central Africa and coffee makers are now pondering the idea of using it to make natural decaf coffee.

10.) Hair spray bacteria

Name: Microbacterium hatanonis
Common Name: None

This new species wasn’t found in some remote rainforest or deep down in blue; it was isolated as contaminant of hairspray.

The Top 10 New Species were selected from the thousands of species fully described and published in 2008. The public could nominate species through the IISE Web site and nominations were also generated by IISE staff and committee members themselves. The Committee had complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria to provide a breadth of species attributes and importance.

I am sorry that we don’t have pictures of all species. To see pictures of all species you can here.

If you would like to nominate a species for the 2010 Top 10 New Species please click here.

Shark fin soup has traditionally been a must-have among well-to-do Asians and an essential part of the menu at commemorative dinners, such as wedding banquets and New Years celebrations in countries like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, as awareness grows about the precarious situation many species of shark are facing in the wild due to over-harvesting; many Asians – especially young ones –are substituting the shark fin soup with alternative dishes at their celebratory events.

Singaporean groom Han Songguang and his scuba diving bride are just one example of this trend; when they tied the knot in December last year they served their guests lobster soup and placed explanatory postcards depicting a dead shark on each seat.

“If we can do our part to save ‘X’ number of sharks … why not?” said Han, a geography teacher.

A symbol of wealth and status in several Asian cultures, shark fin soup consumption has traditionally been a delight available for a comparatively low number of Asian upper-class families only. Hand-in-hand with rising affluence in East Asia and the development of a prosperous middle class segment of society, demand has however soared rapidly in the late 20^th and early 21^st century and about 20 percent of all shark species are now endangered, partly due to them being over-fished to satisfy the Asian markets.

“They live a long time. They have a low reproductive rate. In other words they produce just a few young every year or every few years. So you just can’t take a lot,” says Yvonne Sadovy, a biology professor at the University of Hong Kong.

As more and more young Asians opt for lobsters and other alternatives to shark fins, market demands have dropped noticeably in recent years. After peaking at 897,000 metric tonnes in 2003, the world wide shark consumption has sunk to 758,000 in 2006, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation. British wildlife group TRAFFIC says shark fins now make up an increasingly small percentage of the total consumption.

“Students and people in their 20s wouldn’t go to a shark eatery, and $15 for a dish is no cheap price,” says Joyce Wu, programme officer with TRAFFIC.

Shang-kuan Liang-chi, a National Taiwan University student agrees. “University students never go in there,” he says, referring to a shark fin restaurant near campus.

The decline is not only due to shark fins becoming increasingly out of vogue among environmentally concerned youngsters; the global financial crisis and its effects in Asia has caused many Asian to cut down on restaurant visits or order less expensive dishes.

Another sure sign of the declining popularity of shark fin soup in Asian is the menu for Singapore’s Annual Chefs’ Association dinner – it is now completely void of shark fin dishes.

“It is much harder to stop serving shark’s fin in our restaurants as the consumers still demand it. However, in our personal capacity, we can make a stand,” said Otto Weibel, a food manager at one of Singapore’s top hotels.

In a study announced today by the Wildlife Conservation Society* (WCS) at the International Coral Reef Initiative** (ICRI) meeting in Thailand, researchers show that some coral reefs located off East Africa are unusually resilient to climate change. The high resilience is believed to be caused by geophysical factors in combination with improved fisheries management in these waters.

After studying corals off the coast of Tanzania, researchers found that these coral reefs has made an incredibly speedy recovery from the 1998 bleaching event that wiped out up to 45 percent of the region’s corals. The authors of the study attribute the swift recovery to a combination of reef structure and reef management.

Compared to many other coral reefs around the world, Tanzania’s reefs are used to considerable variations in both current and water temperature which has turned these reefs into an unusually complex web of different coral species. This bio-diverse ecosystem includes several different species known to quickly re-colonize an area after a bleaching incident.

The authors of the study believe that reefs in other parts of the world subjected to similarly diverse environmental conditions might have the same high ability to recover from large-scale climatic and human disturbances. The study provides additional evidence that such “super reefs” can be found in the triangle from Northern Madagascar across to northern Mozambique to southern Kenya and the authors suggest that these reefs should be a high priority for conservation efforts since they may come to play an important global role in the future recovery of coral reefs worldwide.

“Northern Tanzania’s reefs have exhibited considerable resilience and in some cases improvements in reef conditions despite heavy pressure from climate change impacts and overfishing,” says Dr. Tim McClanahan***, the study’s lead author. “This gives cause for considerably more optimism that developing countries, such as Tanzania, can effectively manage their reefs in the face of climate change.”

The study also stresses the impact of direct management measures in Tanzania, including closures to commercial fishing. Algae is known to easily smother corals, but researchers found how areas with fishery closures contained a rich profusion of algae eating fish species that kept the corals clean. The few sites without any management measures remained degraded, and in one of them the population of sea urchins had exploded. Sea urchins feed on corals and can therefore worsen the problem for an already suffering reef.

The study has been published in the online journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.

Authors of the study include Tim McClanahan and Nyawira Muthiga of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Joseph Maina of the Coral Reef Conservation Project, Albogast Kamukuru of the University of Dar es Salaam’s Department of Fisheries Science and Aquaculture, and Saleh A.S. Yahna of the University of Dar es Salaam’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Stockholm University’s Department of Zoology.

* The Wildlife Conservation Society is an institutional partner to ICRI and is actively conserving tropical coral reef species in priority seascapes in Belize, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Kenya and Madagascar. Along with monitoring reefs, WCS also trains of park staff in protected areas.

** The International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) is a global partnership among governments and organizations working to stop and reverse the degradation of coral reefs and related ecosystems. This ICRI General Meeting was convened by the joint Mexico – United States Secretariat.

*** Dr. McClanahan’s research regarding ecology, fisheries, climate change effects, and management of coral reefs at key sites throughout the world is supported by the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) and The Tiffany & Co. Foundation.

First of, let me tell everyone how sorry I am that I have been posting a bit sporadic lately. Things have been crazy but hopefully they will improve even though it still might be a couple of weeks until they do. Until then you will unfortunately have to be content with the host I do manage to post. But now, without further ado, on to the Asian arowana

Asian Arowana – Scleropages formosus. Copyright www.jjphoto.dk

Bristol Zoo Gardens have bred the rare Asian Arowana (Scleropages formosus). The spawning resulted in 15 fry which are now estimated to be nine weeks old. The staff did not witness the spawning which is why they can only estimate the age of the fry for this mouth-breeding species. It is not the first time the Asian Arowanas have spawned in Bristol Zoo Gardens, but it is the first time the fry have survived.

Bristol Zoo Gardens has kept four Arowanas, also known as Dragon fish, for 13 years. They received the specimens from the UK custom services who had confiscated them after revealing an attempt to smuggle them into the country.

The zoo has recently taken steps to improve the Arowana exhibit by using reverse osmosis, and has also increased the temperature in the holding tanks. The assistant curator of the aquarium at Bristol Zoo Gardens, Jonny Rudd, believes that one of these actions might be the reason behind the successful breeding. This might very well be true but I also wish to mention the possibility that it might simply have to do with the parents getting more mature and learning from past failures, a well known phenomenon in mouth brooding fish and other fish that care for their young.

This is as far as I know the first time this species have been bred outside Asia.

The Asian Arowana is very rare in the wild and is on the brink of extinction in Thailand. It is red listed by Cites and can not be imported to many countries. This species is bred in farms in Asia where it is a popular exclusive aquarium fish, believed to bring luck due to its resemblance to a dragon. It is today available in a variety of different colorations and morphs. In Asia you can by farm bred fish with certifications stating that they are farm bred and not wild caught, and some countries allow you to import such specimens. You can read more about the Asian Arowana here.

Giant Mekong catfish. Copyright www.jjphoto.dk

According to Zeb Hogan, head of the National Geographic Society’s Megafishes Project, a new dam project planned for Khone Falls in Laos threatens the migration of the Mekong giant catfish. The largest Mekong giant catfish ever caught weighed in at an astonishing 293 kilograms (646 pounds), but the existence of this magnificent species is unfortunately threatened in the wild and it is currently listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union.

You can find out more by visiting National Geographic at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/photogalleries/catfish-pictures/

The Mekong giant catfish inhabits the Mekong River Delta in South-East Asian and can be found not only in Laos, but also in nearby Cambodia. Earlier, the species lived in Thailand as well but it is now believed to have become completely eradicated from the Thai part of the Mekong River Delta. (It has however been introduced as a sport fish in a number of lakes in Thailand, so the species has not vanished completely from Thai waters.) The situation is critical for the populations in Laos and Cambodia as well and the new dam might worsen an already precarious situation. The primary threats against the Mekong giant catfish are habitat destruction, pollution and over fishing. You can find more information about the Mekong giant catfish here: http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/catfish/giantmekong.php