Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
On the final day of a two-week expedition, where researchers were searching for a “lost” species along Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River, Helen Asu arrived with two small, greenish-brown fish. She had caught them while fishing for prawns with an umben, a traditional hand net, near Imbando village in East Sepik province.
They were spinach pipefish (Microphis spinachioides), a species known only from the Sepik and not recorded by scientists since 1985, reports Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman.
“It was honestly an incredible moment,” said Jerrica Agebigo, a researcher at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology and the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre, who led the expedition. “When Helen showed the fish to us, I immediately realized that we had found something very special.”
The spinach pipefish is a freshwater relative of seahorses and seadragons. It grows to about 15 centimeters (6 inches) and uses its elongated snout to catch small prey. Its coloring helps conceal it among water lilies and other plants along the banks of the Sepik, Papua New Guinea’s longest river.
Almost everything else about it remains uncertain. The specimen used to describe the species was held at Hamburg’s natural history museum, but was destroyed during the second world war. When the fish was last assessed for the IUCN Red List in 2016, it was classified as data deficient. It later became one of the 10 most sought-after species on the “Lost Fishes” list, compiled by SHOAL, Re:wild and the IUCN Freshwater Fish Specialist Group. The wider list includes more than 300 freshwater fishes missing to science.
Agebigo’s team, made up of local scientists and community members, set out in June to learn whether the pipefish still survived and, if so, what threats it faced. Along the Sepik river they showed pictures to residents and asked fishers whether they recognized it. On June 18, Asu supplied the answer.
The rediscovery will allow scientists to begin filling gaps in knowledge left by four decades without a confirmed record of the fish.
“The fact that a species could go without a confirmed record for around four decades — and then be found through the daily activities of a local fisher — is a powerful reminder of the importance of local ecological knowledge,” Agebigo said. “Without Helen’s knowledge, experience and willingness to help us, we may not have found the species.”
Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here
Banner image of a Spinach pipefish. Image courtesy of the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre.
