Happy New Year!!!

Best Wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year to Everyone!!!

We are headed back to collect Wet Season Annual Killifish in January and February. Then I will be speaking at the West Coast Weekend Killie Extravaganza in San Francisco, California in April. Then I will be speaking at the AKA National Killifish Association convention in Baltimore, MD over Labor day! I will then return to Peru from June to September to collect all Summer. So if you are thinking about putting together a trip to the South American Tropics this year. Send me a PM and lets discuss your plans!!!

I will be speaking twice in November, 2010!!!

I will be speaking to the San Francisco Aquarium Society on Nov. 5th and to the Sacramento Aquarium Society on Nov. 6th. If you are in the area either date, please stop in and say hello!

I am headed back to collet fish for all of October!

I hope to report on some interesting fish we are planning to export to the USA next month. Please watch for up dates coming again in the weeks ahead!

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!!!

Back from Machu Pichhu

The clients are home with their families in Canada with a good story to tell. And I am happy to say they had a good trip collecting fish in the Madre de Dios region with WildPERU!

New Aphyolebias species???

Comments welcome!

West Coast Weekend 2010

After some technical difficulties (operator error) on my part, West Coast Weekend 2010 in Portland, Oregon, got off to a slow start and finished strongly with a 600 item auction that featured an incredible array of species for sale. Great company, great speakers and great fish are what make convention strong and this one exceeded everyone's expectations. Now I off to Lima. Stay tuned for more from WildPERU!!!

Killies of Bolivia

Moema spp.
Trigonectes spp?
Aphyolebias rubrocaudatus

YOY Ameiva?

This cute little lizard was found in my shower! If you know what it is, please comment.

Same Cory as below

This photo is of the same Bolivian Corydoras catfish we caught in February, however, this one is her out of the water, so you can really see the bright red Dorsal and green body!! Very special.

Rio Parimanu trip is now scheduled for July 7th-14, 2010!!!

This is going to be an incredible adventure. 7 days camping and fish collecting on a largely unknown stretch of this beautiful river in Southern Peru. The last collecting effort there was attempted in 2003 when Lance Peck traveled 3 days upriver to sample it's lower reaches. We intend to spend a total of 7 days there and get as many as FIVE DAYS upriver before turning around and collecting our way back to civilization! This means camping and living in the dense jungle habitat of this remote river-jungle adventure at it's very best! There is still room for one more person. If this sounds interesting to you contact me immediately!

New Cory?

I just got back fdrom the Rio Heath. Here's one of the fish I found. Thoughts?

En Peru

I am back in Peru for a trip guiding clients to the Pampas Del Heath region for one week and then up to the cloud forest for a second week. With this El Niño weather pattern settling in, the rainfall is pretty heavy this year. I am hopeful to get into some remote areas on this trip if the water levels aren´t too high. It is the best time of year to view Orchids in the cloud forest!!!

Extraordinary Video on Hummingbirds

http://video.pbs.org/video/1380512531

We see so many Hummers in our travels throughout Peru, but especially in the Cloud Forest.

Check out this great Website!!!

The Rio Las Piedras is an amazing place, close to Puerto Maldonado and very easy for us to get to!!!

Enjoy:


http://robertofabbri.smugmug.com/Wildlife/Peru-Wildlife/9860937_WvzHD/1/671165927_ijr9x#670955656_ouqBj

The Wilkinson Tour, July 2009.


After a night stay at our Bed and Breakfast in Lima, Tom Wilkinson and his daughter, Alissa, transferred back to the Lima Airport for their flight to the Jungle.

Meeting the plane

Tom and Alissa’s flight from Lima took approximately two hours, with a brief layover in Cusco to refuel and take on those passengers going on the next leg of their journey down into the jungle. We met them at the airport in Puerto Maldonado and took them directly to their hotel in town.



The clock tower in the Plaza de Armas in Puerto Maldonado



After settling them into their hotel room, we took them to see a little bit of the city. After Pizza dinner and a good nights sleep, we were off to the Brazilian border to sample the streams going north from Puerto Maldonado.

Here is our “Burro”. Four Wheel Drive and plenty of space for us and our gear:
























Crossing the Madre de dios River by ferry


After driving for 3 hours north from Puerto Maldonado on the newly paved highway, we made it to the border crossing at Inapari. We had made plans to stay in Villa Assis, just across the Rio Acre in Brazil. The accommodations were extremely limited on the Peruvian side of the border, so it made the decision easier.

The new bridge spanning the Peru-Brazil border at the Rio Acre













There is a “Zona Libre” or free area at the border that does not require obtaining a Brazilian Visa to enter. This is the guesthouse that we stayed in when in Villa Assis.













While we waited for one of our crew to recover from a high fever we had time for this:
















The Rio Acre at sunset. Peru is on the left, Brazil on the right.
In the cool of the evening we had a chance to walk back to the border and watch the sun set from the border crossing bridge. The next morning we were headed back to Puerto Maldonado sampling streams as we went.



Our Driver, Edgardo, standing on the brand new paved highway that runs north to the border with Brazil. This makes the trip much smoother and faster, thereby allowing us to cover much more collecting territory!!



Tom in search of Apistogramma rubrolineata. As we headed south we sampled many creeks along the highway however the previous night’s rain had raised the water levels in all of these streams, making collection much more difficult.




Here’s what he found.

An outstanding fish!


Incredible butterflies!!

The “dry” season in 2009 was considered unusual in terms of how wet it truly was. Many of the streams we would typically find easy to collect in at this time of year were high and muddy!





Storm over the Rio Madre de Dios at Puerto Maldonado







Alissa is showing us all how to catch Apistogramma luellingi!!!




Crenicara spp. aff. punctulatum.








Apistogramma leullingi male













When it was time for them to leave, they didn’t want to go home, and we wanted them to stay! Thanks Tom and Alissa! We are looking forward to your next collecting trip to the Madre de Dios region!!!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Red & Green

Are the colors of Christmas!!!!

Gymnorhamichthys rondoni

Ranitomeya biolat

The "Bamboo Dart Frog", Ranitomeya biolat, is found in the bamboo forests of the Madre de Dios region.

Kids Come Collecting too!

See a journal I wrote about my sons trip with me to collect in Peru this past summer, and some of the adventures we had right here:

http://forums.tfhmagazine.com/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=26730