Worst fish-kill in recent times off Guyana and Suriname

In what authorities believe is one of the worst fish-kills in recent times, a lot of Curiass is being washed up on the Guyanese and Surinamese foreshores, apparently due to murky Atlantic Ocean waters and the discharge of freshwater into the sea.

The Fisheries Department of the Ministry of Agriculture says mostly dead Cuirass have been sighted since January 9 and the situation peaked on January 20 when a “significant amount of dead fish was observed on the beaches in the area.

Consultations with Surinamese Fisheries Department officials have revealed that similar occurrences of dead fish have been observed in the vicinity of Nickerie and Coronie during the same period, the ministry here stated.

“An on the spot observation conducted by the Regional Fisheries Officer revealed that the gills were heavily coated with sling mud and slime. This condition may have resulted in oxygen deprivation to the fish resulting in death,” Guyana’s Fisheries Department added.

While the observance of dead fish is said to an annual occurrence by local fisherfolk in both countries, Guyana’s Fisheries Department believes that  this year’s was  “noticeably worse” and may have resulted from one of or a combination of factors.

They include turbidity of the water in the area – caused by excessive rainfall in the general region resulting in excessive cloudiness of the water due to suspended particles from the rivers which flow into the ocean and reduced dissolved oxygen levels. The other major factor could have been a high fresh water discharge – the high discharge of fresh water from the rivers may have disrupted the salinity content of the water in the area which could adversely affect fish in the area.

The University of Guyana’s Biodiversity Centre is expected to conduct tests on samples collected on January 22 to determine the cause of death of the fish. Results will be available several weeks later.

The Fisheries Department said it was also conducting continuous water quality tests to determine the effects of the rainfall on the water quality in the area.

According to officials, the situation has improved greatly since Sunday January 22 and Wednesday, with far less dead fish observed on beaches along the Upper Corentyne Coast. “The situation is being continually monitored by staff of the Fisheries Department,” the Agriculture Ministry department said.

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Briton catches 18ft anaconda in South America

McCann (right) with fellow traveller Robert Pickles (second from left) and two guides. Picture: Barcroft Media

A British man has captured what is thought to be one of the largest snakes in the world.

Niall McCann, a 29-year-old biologist from Cardiff, snared the 18ft anaconda in the tropical rainforests of Guyana, South America, three weeks after he initially spotted the creature during his exploration with fellow traveler Dr Robert Pickles. The find occurred in 2009 but photos have only recently emerged.

The pair had initially set off to search for “giant otters” but came across a river teeming with wildlife - an area never before surveyed by scientists.

Speaking exclusively to Yahoo! News, Mr McCann said: “The animals there had never seen people before so you could get incredibly close to them”. Admitting that the Rewa River in central Guyana was “like the garden of Eden” he also revealed that during the three-week adventure across the river they spotted seven anacondas, four over 16 feet long.

Recalling the first time they saw the 18ft anaconda, the 29-year-old biologist described the behemoth as “frighteningly enormous”. Pulling up their boat beside the bank, McCann and Pickles climbed out to take a closer look. “When you first see something of that size you just don’t know how it will respond. We were very scared, we had heard innumerable horror stories of them taking people and killing them – you know this is a seriously dangerous animal you are faced with,” McCann said.

After taking photos from a safe distance they continued on, spotting the same snake three weeks later in the same spot. After going back up the river that night to camp they “felt confident having handled a lot of snakes and crocodiles in the previous three weeks,” coming to the decision to capture it the next day.

“We spent about 20 minutes preparing the landscape so we could encourage it to move inland, we didn’t want it to go into the river as it could have escaped,” McCann told Yahoo! News.

“It would stretch out then coil, ready to strike, then stretch out and coil again. I said, ‘right, next time it stretches I’m going to go for it’. It started to stretch out and I just leapt on top of it with both hands behind its head, my knee on its back and the other chaps piled on behind me”.

“It was a struggle for the first 30 seconds or so as it tried to move its head from side to side. It tried to scratch at us then Ash, the head guide, came round the front and grabbed it by the jaws as I lifted it up – wrapping its jaws with tape so it could no longer bite us”.

The intrepid explorers then ensured the anaconda could not escape with its jaw taped shut as it would not survive in the wild - a circumstance that McCann admitted would have been “very upsetting for us”. After measuring the anaconda they then freed its jaw – allowing it to escape.

“We were doing it for scientific purposes but I can’t lie, we were also having an adventure,” McCann admitted. “This is the largest snake in the world, it is a pretty amazing thing to do as a biologist to get close to one let alone handle one. There is something primordially intimidating about the appearance of an anaconda- especially one of those proportions”.

Research continues after McCann helped set up a British based conservation project in the area.
 
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/briton-catches-18ft-anaconda-in-south-america.html