Thursday, June 10, 2010

Pez Diablo



Well, on Sunday I went to watch the sunset from the dock, and it was GORGEOUS!!




There was a man fishing on the dock, and I asked him how many fish he had caught. He said eight, and went back to fishing. A few minutes later, he caught the fish you see below. He said that it was ugly, and he was going to kill it because it was new. In his two years of fishing, he had never seen this fish. When he wasn't looking, I picked it up and brought it to the tour guides by the comedor. They confirmed that it was called 'pez diablo' or 'devil fish,' (Hypostomus panamensis, family Loricariidae). I looked it up online, and it is not an introduced fish, but one that migrated here from southern countries such as Costa Rica and Panama. It survives better than many other fish in low-oxygen environments, and is a warning sign of a process called eutrophication in lakes. This fish is a problem for everyone that uses the lake, because it can displace other fish and will multiply more rapidly without a top predator, according to these articles (pop them into Google translator if you don't know Spanish, it does a decent job):
http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/especiales/44082




http://www.lavozdelsandinismo.com/nicaragua/2009-03-25/pez-diablo-causa-alarma-en-nicaragua/




http://www.universalocean.es/el-pez-diablo-amenaza-el-ecosistema-del-lago-cocibolca-en-nicaragua/

Now I want to take the Clarkson Alumni class on water ecology, so I can learn more about water quality issues.

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