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By Heiko Bleher (Italy)
Translator: Candy Lau
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In search of new species of rainbow fish, I traveled all over the island of New Guinea. One of the most difficult to reach pristine areas is the Gulf of Etna on the southern coast of West Papua.
To get to my destination, I set off from Milan, passing through Jakarta and Sorong, and finally arriving at Kaimana. This is my fourth visit to this former Dutch possession. The city of Kemana has boomed and has a new container port that can handle a million cases a year, as well as an extensive road network. Ken and I and Josephine Wiedenhoft once again took the Putiraja large sailing ship from Kemana to Etna Bay. Even with the assistance of her Indonesian friend Josephine, it still took a week to obtain a sailing authorization. In the end, all the documents were signed, and Josephine got the fuel and supplies we needed.
Take the route from Triton into the Gulf of Etna
If you walk along the southern coastline of West Papua, you won't see any small towns along the way except Triton Bay. About 20 years ago, I caught Lake Camaga's Rainbow Silver Fish (Melanotaenia kamaka) and Lake Lagamora's Rainbow Silver Fish (M. lakamora) from Lake Triton. The Tritons lake system includes Kamaka, Lakamora and Aiwaso, with altitudes ranging from 700 to 900 metres. The area was still quite primitive at the time, but today Conservation International has set up factories on the area. On a hill within the bay is a small village called Lobo.
The mountains that stretch from the coastline to about 1,000 meters above sea level are covered with beautiful virgin forests. We sail past many uninhabited islands with beautiful sandy beaches, and then around 3 p.m. the wide entrance to Etna Bay comes into view. We dropped anchor next to a small peninsula jutting into the bay and saw a house with a cross on the roof. We drove our little speedboat around the headland and found a township larger than we expected, but it wasn't recorded on the map and its coordinates weren't visible on Google Maps.
The entrance to the Gulf of Etna is almost an undeveloped paradise.
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The pier was a bit off the shore and we had to climb up to the shore. Josephine asked the village chief, Kepala Desa, for help, and we were escorted all the way to the conference room. Almost all of the village chief's 74 family members gathered here with their families and mouths; the village chief himself was not present. I showed them pictures of rainbow fish from Amazon magazine, but no one recognized them. Although people here eat many different fish, they are not familiar with this small fish because they have no edible value. Unfortunately, none of us knew Indonesian, so we couldn't talk to them. We learned that Kepala Desa would only be back in the evening. When he got home, we were invited to his house as a guest.
Heiko Bleher was talking to the deputy village chief.
He spoke a little English, and we talked at night in the candlelight, and we learned that the area was almost as big as Switzerland, and that the land had more than a dozen villages, with a total of about 2,000 inhabitants. They were divided into two tribes: one was the Napiti, who lived on the right bank; the other was the Manekamoro, and they lived on the left bank. People depend almost entirely on fish (mainly grouper and snapper), and once a month they trade with merchants from Kemana, exchanging them for gasoline, cooking oil and sago. In addition, they hunt wild deer and wild boar during the hunting season and grow pineapples, papayas and some vegetables. The area is officially divided into two areas: Etna and Jamal.
Finally the village chief told me that there was an Mbuta Lake at a very high altitude. If we had the strength to climb, he said, it would take three hours to get there. He kindly sent us two guides from the Napiti tribe, Marcans and Orgenes.
Mubuta Lake is 1,000 meters above sea level, but the lake has almost dried up
Jabaria River
Before we embarked on our journey with Kepala Desa, I spent three hours exploring the small stream nearby. The widest point of the Jabaria River is measured to be more than 3 meters, but the depth does not exceed the knee position.
The stream is powerful and the water quality is very clear. The stream is almost covered with bamboo on both sides, so the creek is very shady. The bottom bed of the stream is fine gravel. There are no aquatic plants here, but there are some fallen trees, branches and fallen leaves in the water. I found some freshwater sea dragons—probably Microphis leiaspis," with a very attractive head pattern and a bright blue stripe along its body. I also spotted some gobies and a dazzling male, Stiphodon semoni.
In the evening we explored the Jabaria River
This is a kind of spiny sea dragon caught in the Jabaria River (Microphis cf. leiaspis), the body color is unusually bright
In this river we also caught another type of freshwater sea dragon, probably the Hippichthys heptagonus.
We also found two delightful freshwater shrimp species:
The first: tennis shrimp with red stripes and dark purple body color (Atyopsis moluccensis);
The second species: the approximate species of Macrobrachium (Macrobrachium cf. spinipes）。
The water quality of this freshwater stream (measured at 5:00 p.m.) has the following parameters:
pH:7.25
Conductivity: 199μS/cm
Water temperature: 25.7 °C
Lake in the mountains
At sunrise, I hiked with Marcans and Orgenes to the high-altitude Mubuta Lake. The climb was exhausting because the trail was so steep that we had to climb over rocks full of plants. Each of us carried 20-40kg of luggage on our backs, which contained my full set of equipment, food and water. Although we walked through the primeval forest in the shade of trees 40-50 meters high and the temperature was only 25 °C, I was still sweating profusely. After a 3-hour arduous trek, we finally reached the valley near the almost dry Mubuta Lake, which is 1115 meters above sea level.
Why do I have to work so hard?
Since my friend Gerald R. Allen discovered in Lake Mubuta in 1998 and named it Pelania mbutaensis in the same year as a unique rainbow fish, the Family Melanotaeniidae has contained 7 genera, each of which is monotypic. I wanted to see this newly discovered variety for myself. I suspect things like Melanotaenia boesemani, orange-red beauty (M. Parva), M. Praecox, Glossolepis pseudoinasus, and many other living organisms that I first collected and introduced to the Aquarium Hobby Market may have a different body color than the existing individuals on the market.
Now I stand at the southern end of this almost dry lake bed, about 10 kilometers long, with only a few small streams and remnants of ponds left. I had to find the Pelangia, so I started collecting with my hand-copied net, but I had to stick the net into the soft mud. I searched through every pond, and before this grueling journey was over, I found only three varieties here. At the same time I saw a large number of dead fish stuck in the long green leaves of the water orchid (Vallisneria). In this gentle flowing lake, I also found a bright red water orchid species.
Two of these three species of fish are gobies:
The first: the small but gorgeous Mogurnda mbutaensis was described by Allen after the expedition;
Mogurnda mbuta is endemic to Mubuta Lake
The second is the bostrychus zonatus, which is similar to it.
We found bostrychus (Bostrychus cf. zonatus) juvenile fish
The third species: a Craterocephalus that has not yet been described. It is very small, with a golden surface of the male and a yellow color of the male.
A golden yellow male chardfish (Craterocephalus sp.) lives in the remnants of Lake Mubuta
Since no rainbow fish have been found in the remaining ponds of Lake Mubuta (perhaps they are extinct?). The disappointment that came with it, I found it particularly difficult to go down the mountain. In addition, the heavy rain makes the steep karst terrain look particularly slippery. Marcans, who was walking behind me, suddenly indicated that we should crawl to the left with our heads down, even though I was sure we should go straight ahead. I followed his instructions, but I was caught off guard, and I stepped on a large rock covered with vegetation, and since the vegetation grew on it, I did not notice a large hole in the middle, and I fell into it and injured the thumb of my right hand. Then I struggled all night to fight off the attack of malaria because I had exhausted almost all my strength to cause an outbreak; my thumb had swollen to 10 times its normal size, so in a few days I had to undergo surgery in Kemana.
Pama River
The next morning we drove almost three hours to a stream in The Gulf of Etna that I wanted to investigate. That is the Pama River, a stream that has not yet been explored. This is my favorite river.
Located at the mouth of the Sungai Pama River in the Gulf of Etna
Access to the Pama River proved to be very difficult, with tides and ubiquitous mangroves blocking the waterway. Marcans disembarked and tried to make a path with his machete, and I seized the opportunity to hurry up fishing. In the brackish waters, I suddenly saw a water needle with a bright beak, the Zenarchopterus, which usually uses its long extended jaw to attract prey like flying insects to the surface of the water. I also caught a species of blue-eyed rainbowfish that was very similar to what I had previously caught at the northern end of Aru. They have a unique neon band along the entire back, probably to attract insects. They are standard surface fish. Another species of blue-eyed swallow (Pseudomugil) has golden yellow fins and looks like the swamp-dwelling mullet (P. patudicola) is very similar. I can also recognize the fourth species, the Tetraodon erythrotaenia , from the water, because they have a very broad orange pattern on their heads.
Melanotaenia sp. “Sungai Pama”）
A blue-eyed rainbowfish from the Pama River- similar species of marsh mullet silverfish (Pseudomugil cf. paludicola）
Parma swallow (Pseudomugil sp." Sungai Pama") male fish
After studying all the detailed characteristics, you will begin to understand the adaptability that these small fish species have evolved to survive. I also caught an orange-yellow band running through the caudal fin (Toxotes). The gobies in this river are most prominently the blood-red-spotted Butis amboinensis and the first red dorsal fin with an extraordinarily large broken line bilateral fish (Ambassis cf. interrupta）。
Butis amboinensis in the Pama River has striking red spots
A cute glass fish in the Pama River, a broken-line bilateral fish, the first red dorsal fin is very large
I'm sure I can find rainbow fish here, but I know I can only be successful if I look for it in the area before the tide has even reached. I kept wandering by the stream and crawling over the fallen wood covered with moss and orchids. Just as I was far away from the mangroves and deep into the jungle, I noticed a flock of rainbow silver han fish appearing on the surface of a nearby stream. They swim in a few sunny places under the shade of towering trees. The crystal clear water of the stream flows slowly through the shallow sand that I can catch with my hand-written nets. This breed has a dark blue thick stripe from the eyes to the tail, and is dotted with a row of red dots.
Freshly caught male rainbow fish Melanotaenia sp." Sungai Ambalanga”
Melanotaenia sp.“ Sungai Ambalanga "Male fish's body color changes to orange-yellow
The parameters I found in the Rainbow Fish Habitat Water Quality (measured at 5:00 PM) are as follows:
pH: 7.35
Conductivity: 152μS/cm
Water temperature: 28.5 °C
At low tide, the water quality parameters downstream of the habitat are:
pH :7.65
Conductivity: 715μS/cm
Water temperature: 27.7 °C
Ambalanga River
To celebrate the first rainbow fish I collected, and to help me recover, Josephine promised to prepare me a steak of ding-bone steaks for the evening. My thumb is now swollen to an indescribable degree. But before I left on the last day, I wanted to visit another river. Marcans already knew what rainbow fish looked like, and he told us that there was also an Ambalanga River that also inhabited rainbow fish.
I experienced the night against the high fever, and the next morning at 8am we set off again. In addition to Josephine and Marcans, who knew the route, our chef also came with them. This last stop was the best fishing ground on our trip. Once again we climbed over the upside-down tree and soon reached the upper reaches of the river. Here we found a deep valley with a swam of brilliant rainbow fish. When I saw them through the underwater diving goggles, I almost forgot to breathe. I've never seen a single species of fish combine into so many rainbow-like colors. Later I learned that these fish can change their body color like chameleons, and some of them have turned golden yellow.
Water quality (measured at 11:00 a.m.) parameters are as follows:
pH:7.8
Conductivity: 195μS/cm,
Water temperature: 25.3 °C
The stream is sandy and devoid of any aquatic vegetation. A large amount of Cryptocoryne ciliata grows only in the tidal zone of the lower Ambalanga River. I struggled to catch rainbow silver mantle fish because they were really very flexible. Unfortunately, my two assistants did not succeed quickly at the other end of the fence. I wish my partner Natasha had followed!
Female Melanotaenia sp. The body color of the "Sungai Ambalanga" rainbow silver manta is quite attractive
Still, in the end we succeeded, and I was able to bring these dream species home. Now they have multiplied successfully and enriched our beautiful and intellectual aquarists. Also in this amazing rainbow fish and other species, I found a stiphodon that also inhabits the same habitat, most likely the light reddish-branched tiger .d., S. variant of rutilaureus).
The Ambalanga River is where I catch these new rainbow fish
It was a rather dangerous journey, but I thought it was well worth it and I would definitely do it again. In this unspoiled area, there are still countless treasures that have not yet been discovered. However, the Pelangia, a kingfish, remains unaccounted for.
－ End －
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