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.

This is certainly an interesting way to get people interested in conserving our planets’ water supply.

It appears that finally someone has come up with a way for us to be more conscientious of how much water we use.. Use less, or kill of your friend.. A rather ingenious, if a little sadistic, designer by the name of Yan Lu has come up with a sink that basically threatens to kill off an innocent goldfish if you use too much water when washing your hands.

It works much on the same principal as a toilet. As you wash your hands the water slowly empties out of a bowl which houses your friendly neighborhood goldfish, and when you are finished, gradually places more water back into the bowl.

The invention has been dubbed the “Poor Little Fishbowl Sink” and has been making quite a big splash in articles around the globe. You don’t need to worry about washing your hands with fishy water either, the water from the bowl empties into a different place, and doesn’t come out of the tap.

Of course, Yan Lu is not a sadist, so the bowl will never completely empty, though you can bet the poor goldfish is getting quite a workout on the old heart every time his home starts to disappear!

Lu is quoted as saying on his website: “As consumption is incalculable, saving is often neglected through daily consumption. Rather than forcing people to consume less, thus depressing the using experience, Poor Little Fish basin offers an emotional way to persuade consumers to think about saving water, by making consumption tangible.”

Way to go and help save the planet Lu! A few stressed out goldfish is worth it, if we can help ourselves to stop being so selfish by wasting water.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five percent of the surface water in China is so contaminated that it can’t even be used for industrial purposes. The sad thing about that figure is, while twenty-five percent is that contaminated, less than half of the total supply available is fit for human consumption. This data came from an environment watchdog this past Monday.

Inspectors in China have been painstakingly testing water samples from the major rivers and lakes for the first half of this year, and have proclaimed that just 49.3 percent of the water would be safe for human consumption. This number is actually up from the 48 percent of last year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection declared in a public notice from their website.

China has six grades they use for classifying their water supplies, with the first three grades being considered safe for human use, such as drinking and bathing.

Another 24.6 percent of the water supply was said to have fallen in categories four and five, which is only good for industrial or agricultural use. This leaves a total of 24.3 percent in category six, which is not suitable for any use at all.

This is an absolute appalling state of affairs, and despite tougher regulations being implemented over the past 10 years, the ministry is still struggling to keep tabs on thousands of paper mills, cement factories, and chemical plants which are pumping their industrial waste right into the water supplies of the country.

This is a serious problem, but it seems like it will be quite some time before they get a handle on it.

Massive fish death is planned for the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, historically known as the Chicago Drainage Canal, in northern United States.

Starting early next month, authorities will inject the powerful fish poison Rotenone into a five-mile stretch of the canal; from Lockport Locks to the electronic barrier system near 135th Street in Romeoville. The government wants to stop Asian carps from entering the Great Lakes while one of the electronic barriers is shut down for routine maintenance.

Completed in the year 1900, the canal is the only shipping link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system, and the aim of the mass killings is to save the Great Lakes ecosystem from the Asian invaders that have found their way into the manmade waterway.

Two species of Asian carp – the bighead* and the silver** – were imported by catfish farmers in the 1970’s to remove algae and suspended matter from the catfish ponds. During the early 1990s, large floods in the area made farm ponds overflow, giving the carps a chance to escape into the Mississippi River basin.

Since then, the carps have steadily made their way up the Mississippi river and are today the two most abundant species in parts of the system. They outcompete native species and cause starvation in large native game fish by devouring such large amounts of plankton.

Introducing rotenone to the canal will kill all fish, not just the Asian carps, and this has naturally stirred up some controversy. The poison is said to be safe to people, pets and other wildlife in the area, but no one should eat any fish killed by the chemical.

The plans to poison the canal were announced during a special telephone press conference Friday afternoon with members of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

“This plan has been developed with input from many biologists and scientists who all agree this is the best course of action,” said John Rogner, assistant director of the IDNR. “All of the (dead) fish will be removed and disposed of in our landfills. The clean up will take a couple of days and the cold water should remove any odours.”

Electro-fishing techniques will be used to remove and relocate as much game fish as possible from the canal prior to the release of the poison, and there are also plans to restock game fish in the area afterwards, as soon as chemical accelerants have been applied to remove the rotenone from the water.

* Bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis)
** Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix)

Ballast water is great for stabilizing a ship in rough waters. Unfortunately, it is equally great at carrying all sorts of aquatic organisms across the world before releasing them into new ecosystems where many of them become problematic invasive species.

The cost of invasive species in the Great Lakes of North America have now reached $200 million a year and scientists predict that this number will increase sharply if the dreaded fish virus known as VHS manage to hitchhike its way into Lake Superior. Considering the number of international shipping vessels that arrive to this river system each week, it is probably just a matter of time unless drastic measures are put in place to stop the costly carrying of disruptive stowaways.

Is ballast treatment the solution?
On-board ballast treatment systems have been proposed by parts of the shipping industry as well as by many scientists, but so far, no one has been able come up with an efficient, cost-effective and safe solution that will work in both freshwater and saltwater. Researchers from the Lake Superior Research Institute* in Superior are now trying to change this.

“The question is how clean is clean? Zero would be great, but is it achievable?” asks Mary Balcer, director of the Lake Superior Research Institute.

Balcer, her research team and students at the University of Wisconsin-Superior are currently analyzing a long row of different solutions developed by private companies to see if any of them could help protect environments such as the Great Lakes from the threat of marauding newcomers.

The goal is to find a solution that will eliminate as many living organisms as possible before the ballast water is released. The treatment must also be safe for the ecosystem into which the water will be released.

Freshwater more demanding
Last month, researcher Tom Markee and several students tested using chlorine to eliminate organisms such as tiny worms, midges and water fleas growing in fish tanks in the university lab. Carrying large containers of chlorine on a ship is naturally dangerous, so Markee and his team instead opted for a solution where the treatment system produces its own chlorine by exposing saltwater to an electric current. The goal for Markee et al is now to find the ideal dose of chlorine as well as make sure that the system works in different types of water.

“They’ve tested it in saltwater and it works fine, but when you get to harbors or a river system, that’s when it becomes less effective,” Markee explains.

Other examples of techniques that are being explored by the research institute are the use of ultraviolet light, ozone and even lethal inaudible sound.

Balcer says her research team hasn’t yet found any viable treatment system that would kill all the living organisms in a ballast tank, but she’s happy with the progress that’s been made.

“Everyone’s behind getting the problem solved,” she says. Eventually we’ll be able to find something that really works.”

* Lake Superior Research Institute, http://www.uwsuper.edu/wb/catalog/general/2006-08/programs/LSRI.htm

At a meeting in Paris last month, the General Assembly of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) agreed to introduce a new thermodynamic description of seawater. The new description will be based on a new salinity variable called Absolute Salinity.

“Scientists will now have an accurate measure of the heat content of seawater for inclusion in ocean models and climate projections,” said Hobart-based CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship scientist Dr Trevor McDougall. “Variations in salinity and heat influence ocean currents and measuring those variations are central to quantifying the ocean’s role in climate change. The new values for salinity, density and heat content should be in widespread use within 18 months.”

Salinity is measured using the conductivity of seawater, a technique which assumes that the composition of salt in seawater is the same all over the world – which it isn’t. Salinity varies throughout the world’s oceans and for over one and a half century, scientists have been searching for the ‘magic formula’ for measuring salinity.

“The new approach, involving Absolute Salinity, takes into account the changes in the composition of seasalt between different ocean basins which, while small, are a factor of about 10 larger than the accuracy with which scientists can measure salinity at sea,” Dr McDougall explained.

Two species of Asian mouse-deer have been observed utilizing a very interesting technique to get away from predators; they jump into the water and stay there until its safe to come up. By carefully swimming up to the surface to breathe now and then they can stay submerged for long periods of time.

People living in the Indonesian country side have always claimed that deer hide in the water when chased by their dogs, but it wasn’t until the behaviour was observed by a team of scientists doing a biodiversity survey that it caught the attention of the larger scientific community.

In June 2008, the team visited the northern Central Kalimantan Province in Borneo, Indonesia where they suddenly spotted a mouse-deer swimming in a forest stream. When the deer understood that it was being watched by humans, it went below the surface and remained hidden. Over the next hour, team members could see it come to the surface four or five times. Although it probably went up for air a few more times without being noticed, it could clearly remain submerged for more than five minutes at a time.

Eventually, the researchers caught the animal and photographed it before releasing it back into the wild unharmed. It was a pregnant female deer.

One of the members of the team is the wife of Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist working with the Nature Conservancy in Balikpapan, Indonesia. When she showed her husband the photograph, he identified it as a Greater mouse-deer (Tragulus napu).

That same years, another group of observers witnessed a Mountain mouse-deer (Moschiola spp) throwing itself into pond and swimming under water to get a way from a hungry mongoose in Sri Lanka. The mongoose followed it into the pond, but eventually retreated as the deer continued to stay submerged.

“It came running again and dived into the water and swam underwater. I photographed this clearly and it became clear to me at this stage that swimming was an established part of its escape repertoire,” says Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, who saw the incident.

“Seeing it swim underwater was a shock”, he says. “Many mammals can swim in water. But other than those which are adapted for an aquatic existence, swimming is clumsy. The mouse-deer seemed comfortable, it seemed adapted.”

Both incidents have now been described in the journal “Mammalian Biology”.

“This is the first time that this behaviour has been described for Asian mouse-deer species,” says Meijaard. “I was very excited when I heard the mouse-deer stories because it resolved one of those mysteries that local people had told me about but that had remained hidden to science.”

What is a mouse deer?

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Tragulidae

Mouse deer are small deer-like animals with large upper canine teeth. In male specimens you can even see the teeth project down either side of the lower jaw. Ten different species of mouse-deer have been described by science and all except one live in South-East Asia. The Water Chevrotain (Hyemoschus aquaticus) is the only mouse deer native to the African continent and it is also the largest member of the family.

The Water Chevrotain (Hyemoschus aquaticus) lives in swampy habitats and is known to dash into the nearest river as soon as it is spooked by something. Until recently, this was the only mouse deer in which the habit of swimming under water and staying submerged for long periods of time had been described and all the Asian members of the family Tragulidae were thought to be strictly dry-land animals.

Eleven of the 18 freshwater stingrays living at the U.S. National Zoo died over the holiday weekened, together with two arowanas. All dead fishes were residents of the zoo’s Amazonia exhibit; a 55,000-gallon (208,000 L) aquarium designed to replicate a flooded Amazon forest. Zoo officials are now suspecting low oxygen levels to be behind the sudden mass death.

Picture of Motoro Sting Ray, Ocellate river stingray – Potamotrygon motoro. Not one of the dead rays.
Copyright www.jjphoto.dk

As soon as the deaths were discovered 7 a.m Monday morning, zookeepers tested the water and found low levels of dissolved oxygen. They immediately started supplementing the aquarium with reservoir water and no more fish have died so far. In addition to stingrays and arrowanas, the Amazon aquarium is also home to discus, boulengerella fish, and a large school of guppies. By 10:15 a.m. Monday, the oxygen levels were back to normal but zookeepers continue to monitor the health of the surviving fish just in case.

Necropsies performed on the dead fish did not unveil any definite cause of death, which makes low oxygen levels even more likely, according to National Zoo officials. They do not believe human error caused the oxygen drop, since all protocols and checks were properly followed Sunday night.

Insufficient levels of dissolved oxygen in the water are one of the most common causes of fish mass death, in the wild as well as in captivity. Last year, 41 stingrays died at the Calgary Zoo in Canada due oxygen scarcity in the water.

The Florida legislature has unanimously passed a bill to create the “Florida Coral Reef Protection Act”.

The new act will protect Florida’s coral reefs from boat groundings and injuries caused by anchoring by providing penalties for anchoring on a coral reef or making any other vessel damages the corals. Depending on the nature and extent of the damage, wrongdoers will pay damages ranging form $150 to $250,000.

The “Florida Coral Reef Protection Act” applies to all State waters that contain coral reefs off the coasts of Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach counties.

The legislature determined that coral reefs are valuable natural resources that contribute ecologically, aesthetically, and economically to the state of Florida. It also declared that it is in the best interest of the state of Florida to clarify the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s powers and authority to protect coral reefs through timely and efficient recovery of monetary damages resulting from vessel groundings and anchoring related injuries.

The passage of the act has been preceded by several months of negotiations among various state agencies, stakeholder and environmental groups, including the Marine Industry Association and Reef Relief whose involvement greatly contributed to the act becoming a reality. Another important participant was the Palm Beach County Reef Rescue which has worked with the regulatory community for several years to develop a more effective enforcement strategy against coral reef anchoring.

To see a link to the legislation click here

Madagascar, a large island situated in the Indian Ocean off the south-eastern coast of the African continent, is home to an astonishing array of flora and fauna. Madagascar, then part of the supercontinent Gondwana, split from Africa about 160 million years ago and became an island through the split from the Indian subcontinent 80-100 million years ago.

Madagascar is now the 4^th largest island in the world and its long isolation from neighbouring continents has resulted in an astonishingly high degree of endemic species; species that can be found nowhere else on the planet. Madagascar is home to about 5% of the world’s plant and animal species, of which more than 80% are endemic to island. You can for instance encounter Appert’s Tetraka bird (Xanthomixis apperti), the carnivorious Fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) and over 30 different species of lemur on Madagascar. Of the 10,000 plants native to Madagascar, 90% are endemic.

The diverse flora and fauna of Madagascar is not limited to land and air; you can find an amazing array of creatures in the water as well – including a rich profusion of endemic fish species. Unfortunately, the environment on Madagascar is changing rapidly and the fish – just like most of the other creatures – risk becoming extinct in the near future.

The fishes of Madagascar currently have to deal with four major threats:

• Deforestation
• Habitat Loss
• Overfishing
• Invasive species

In a response to this, and to educe people around the world about the fish of Madagascar, aquarist Aleksei Saunders have created the website Madagascar’s Endangered Fishes on which he shares his knowledge of Madagascan fish species and the perils they’re facing, but also highlights all the things we can do to improve the situation.

The site focuses on freshwater fish conservation and captive breeding, since collection of wild fish to bring endangered species into captivity for managed reproductive efforts plays a large part of the conservation effort in Madagascar.

In addition to the website, Alex is also gives power-point presentations on husbandry and conservation breeding of Madagascar’s endemic fish fauna, since more and more aquarists around the world are taking a large interest in doing their part to help endangered fish species.

Alex has worked with fish since 1990 and it was through his work as an aquarist at Denver Zoo he became enthralled with the ichthyofauna of Madagascar. During the early 1990s Denver Zoo started a conservation program with the endemic freshwater fishes of Madagascar and in 1998 Alex got the chance to pay his first, but certainly not last, visit to the island. Today, his trips primarily focus on educating the Malagasy on their wonderful natural heritage and ways of conserving it, assessing the condition of native freshwater habitats and the fish population therein, and collecting wild fish for managed captive breeding. Alex now manages on of the most diverse collections of Madagascan endemic fishes in North America, including 5 species of rainbowfish, 4 species of cichlid, and 3 killifish species.

With this site I hope to educate, motivate, and stimulate people into action to help save Madagascar’s endangered fishes. Please look around the site. There are sections for fish hobbyists, adventure travellers, conservation biologists, and just those curious about the world in which we live.

Cheers,

Aleksei Saunders