2010 collecting season Recap!!

Here is a group photo of the people involved in the Rio Pariamanu expedition. We explored the middle and upper reaches of this remote jungle river to look at the fish fauna there and we made some interesting finds.



Of course, one of the most "mission critical" members of any expedition is the cook! Here is Yesenia, our cook for five days on the river.






The river itself is a very sinuous lowland jungle river, typical of many such rivers in Peru and elsewhere in South America. Some of the rivers bends took us back within 50 meters of the adjacent portion! This makes for slow progress upstream. The trip up took five days. The trip back only 2!




A new Centromolchis spp. catfish. These were caught in schools of fifty, right in the main river near the confluence of small side streams.




A juvenile of a riverine predatory characin. It has an interesting white lateral line stripe and very strong dentition!




This 11 meter boat served as our "Home away from Home" for 7 days travel up and back. We camped at night on the sandy banks of the river. It is a very comfortable way to travel.


One night a toad came to visit our camp and pose for it's picture to be taken!









Here's Jeremy Basch and myself seining the upper river.




Good fun!




Many species of Sucker-mouthed catfishes are present here.


The further we progressed, the shallower and narrower the river became.



A parasitic catfish?



Here we are camped on a small tributary of the upper Pariamanu River called Quebrada San Juan. Here Yesenia is fixing dinner by the rivers edge, hoping that he rain holds off and the creek doesn't rise in the night!





On the way back we collected a nice golden form of a cichlid,


Burjurquina spp.


The trip itself was a great success!!!