Fish could save Brazil rainforest

Darren Garnick Boston Herald 19 Nov 08;

Scott Dowd’s regular clients don’t care much about marketing. All they want to know is when their next batch of frozen rats or squirming worms is being served.

Dowd, an Amazon biologist at the New England Aquarium, regularly takes care of three anaconda - swimming boa constrictors that crush their prey to death. He also provides hospitality for the far more gentle cardinal tetras, bright red and blue guppy-sized fish that are extremely popular with home aquarium enthusiasts.

In the wild, these shimmery cardinal tetras are lucky to live for a year. In captivity, however, their life span can be up to 10 years. For the past two decades, Dowd has been researching the pitch-black, acidic waters of the Rio Negro, a major Amazon tributary in Northern Brazil. The region, which has exported millions of tropical fish around the world since the 1950s, depends on the harvest to financially support 60 percent of its population.

“They’re beautiful,” says Dowd. “When the sun catches these cardinal tetras, they glow like Christmas ornaments.”

The Boston biologist is planning to revisit the Brazilian paradise in January as part of an ongoing “Save a Fish, Save a Tree” campaign. So far, economic factors have caused the government to zealously protect this section of rainforest because these fish thrive in the shade. But the rising popularity of farm-raised cardinal tetras puts this equation in jeopardy.

Mega-retailers of home aquariums, such as PetSmart and Wal-Mart, prefer the farmed fish because they can live at a neutral pH level, unlike the acidic conditions of the wild tetras. The changing markets mean that Brazilian fishermen are facing a dwindling customer base.

“All this is very counter-intuitive,” says Dowd. “You would think biologists would not want to take fish out of the rainforest. But the fish are the key to miminizing deforestation. The people’s other economic options - timber harvest, cattle ranching and gold mining - are environmental disasters.”

“Things look grim,” he adds. “The local fisheries look like they are headed for collapse. But there’s hope that this threat can be addressed. If you ask fish hobbyists if they care about the environment, a very high percentage say they care about it deeply.”

Dowd thinks Amazon fishermen can ride the current wave of feel-good, cause labeling. Based on the marketing model of Fair Trade coffee and FSC certified renewable lumber, he believes wild fish will sell with the “Buy a Fish, Save a Tree” branding.

New England Aquarium researchers are also helping fisheries acclimate cardinal tetras from acidic water to neutral pH tanks to make them more marketable to big-box retailers.

Other plans may include assigning lot numbers to every batch of tropical fish caught in the Rio Negro.

“Imagine if you could go online and see a video of the actual fisherman who caught your tropical fish,” says Dowd. “And if the fisherman told you directly what he would have to do if he could no longer fish.”

“I want hobbyists to know directly how their choices can affect people thousands of miles away and how they can make a contribution to saving the rainforest,” he adds. “Things don’t look good, but we can begin to turn all of this around.”

Darren Garnick’s “The Working Stiff” column runs every Wednesday. Check out the Working Stiff blog at www.bostonherald.com/blogs/workingStiff.