This
is the first of three accounts of trips to Sarawak to collect fish
specimens. It also marked my first experience fishing with the
world-renowned ichthyologist, Dr. Maurice Kottelat. Our main purpose
was to obtain the fish record from the blackwaters of Sarawak, a
project supported and approved by the Sarawak Museum. Our secondary aim
was to collect all belontiids found in Sarawak. In many ways., it was a
success but in some ways, it was the failures which inspired the
following trips. Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 The next
site (~34 km from Mukah) yielded Betta akaransis and Luciocephalus
pulcher. The water was also black and of pH 5.3. There was intact
forest ~200 m parallel to the road. The last site for the day was about
40 km from Mukah. It was a brown-water forest stream of pH 5.6. There
was luxuriant growth of Barclaya motleyi and Cryptocoryne sp. This site
had many Nandus nebulosus and some Betta akarensis. From some wooden
platforms at the bank of the stream, it was clear that it was used by
the locals as a bathing place - that explained the presence of
excessive algal growth and aquatic plants. Day 4 Today
we tried the outskirts of Sibu town, near the airport. We discovered
that the airport had been built over a peat swamp forest. All the
streams in that area were blackwater and some were highly polluted,
especially those running next to the chicken farms. The chickens were
kept in long, bunk-like structures, which we called 'chicken
long-houses'. These streams were full of the refuse of the farms, like
feathers, occasional carcasses and offal. We could smell such streams
before we actually sighted them. Luckily,
there was a clean stream at the northern end of the airport. The pH of
this steam was 4.9 and there was Barclaya motleyi present. We caught
Betta akarensis, Parosphromenus allani, Trichogaster trichopterus and
T.pectoralis. This was a memorable site because I was stung by a hairy
caterpillar feeding on the bankside. vegetation. The
next site was a small river, north of the Durin ferry point toward
Sibu. This was also blackwater and with a depth of 1.5 m. Here we
obtained Parosphromenus allani and Betta akarensis. A new species of
puffer fish, described by Kottelat and Lim (1995) was also caught -
Carinotetraodon salivator. It is a dwarf species and reaches an adult
size of about 5 cm standard length. Rasbora axelrodi was also found
here in small shoals. These are interesting fish with a somewhat
similar coloration to the Neon Tetra, hence the name we gave it, the
Neon Rasbora. The following site was a
shallow, brown-water stream, running out of an old rubber-tree
plantation. There was luxuriant growth of Barclaya motleyi and
Cryptocoryne sp. in the stream. The Barclaya was in full bloom and ripe
fruits were also observed which looked like a purplish bulb. Only Betta
akarensis was obtained from this site, along with a few other species
of cyprinid. Day 5 Once back in Kuching, we
managed to spare some time visiting the antique and book shops. A wide
array of Iban and foreign handicrafts can be found here. From this
trip, we had learned to take other peoples' data with a pinch of salt
because human development had changed things so much. The next trip
would be different!
Being
a first-timer in Kuching, I made a visit to the Sarawak Museum. It had
excellent exhibits of cultural and archaeological interest. The natural
history section was also quite an eyeful, with its many endemic mammals
and birds of Borneo. The museum gift shop had a good selection on the
natural history of Sarawak and Borneo. I spent some time taking in the
sights of Kuching - river front shops, statuettes of cats (kuching in
Malay) and Sungei Sarawak, which fronts the main street of Kuching town.
We
set off, bright and early for Sibu, a largish town in central Sarawak.
The highway connecting Kuching to Sibu was under repair and
construction in certain sections, the road was basically untarred and
full of stones. Most of the time therefore we received posterior and
occasional full-body massage for kilometres on end!! The weather was
fine and very hot (~34°C), hence it took us a full day to reach Sibu.
The
first site that we sampled was a relief from all that travelling for
us. It was a blackwater stream about 100m away from the sea, at about
28 km from the coastal town of Mukah. The water was really cool and
refreshing (~22°C) and from its reflected surface, it looked like a
stream of Coca-Cola but with a pH of 5.0. There were no aquatic plants
but bank vegetation had overgrown into the water which was about 1.2 m
deep. The belontiids caught were Betta akarensis and Parosphromenus
allani. However the site was otherwise quite species-poor with a total
of only five other species.
On
the way back to Kuching, we tried to catch Betta taeniata following the
location data found in Brown and Brown (1987). We tried to decipher the
data and after several interpretations and meandering into side roads,
we decided to call it a day after much frustration. We only managed to
sample one site which yielded no belontiids. Although we came across
some habitats that seemed suitable for Betta brownorum, we did not
catch any.