This is one of the few good news to come from this mistreated corner of the Earth, the Amazon. Murilo Pastana, a zoologist originally from Sao Paolo and fish specialist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, was conducting a census of fish in the Madeira River, Brazil. The goal was to see if their population was increasing or declining. But, surprise: while doing his readings, he came across two schools of fish that had never been seen. Poecilocharax, close to tetras, the neon fish that we often see in freshwater aquariums. Two centimeters long, and magnificent colors: orange with black spots for the first species, and gold for the second.
Two new colorful species of fish have been found in Brazil’s Amazon Basin — and they are already at risk of disappearing due to extinction https://t.co/eVh4bhdYBh
— CNN (@CNN) May 18, 2022
“This is truly an unexpected discoveryexplains Murilo Pastana, the last time researchers found a new species of this family was in 1965, hence our joy when we found them with the team” Short-lived joy, since what the researcher also tells is the atmosphere of the end of the world in which the discovery was made, intense deforestation. “On the one handhe told CNN, it was exciting to find these fish, and at the same time, we could see behind us the burnt trees, the burning forest, the ballet of trucks loading huge trunks and all these hectares finally transformed into pasture for cattle. That’s when I felt the urgency to talk about our discovery before this world disappeared.”
Because these fish, barely discovered, are actually on the verge of extinction. And for good reason: they depend on what the forest pours into the river, in this case the nutrients that the soil, the humus, the trees bring to the water. However, if there is no more forest, there are no more leaves, branches, or anything to feed them. Hence Murilo Pastana’s dilemma: what’s the point of continuing to discover species if their habitat disappears? What’s the point of reporting when the house is burning down? Perhaps this serves precisely to show all the richness, the beauty, the diversity of life, to show how much there is still to discover. In summary, it serves to offer a little wonder to fight against the collapse.