With the help of a savvy local fisherman, who took us several places along the Nanay, we seined the river about 5 times, about 4 hours on the water.
Caught lots of Loricariinae (mostly what the locals call "common loricaria," but I suspect are more of the
), one of which is quite large (like my other catch, about 15cm SL), but also we caught one large dark in the anterior species that the locals call "royal loricaria" and if you ask them the species name they say
, but IDK (GBIF says only
has been caught in the immediate area of Iquitos). This fish is about 10-11 cm SL.... I hope it's not cataphracta, because those fish get huge (about 30cm SL)! The color pattern reminds me more of
, except the space between the eyes is solid black on the fish we caught, rather than having two black stripes by the eyes and pale color on the nose bridge as in the Rio Atabapo fish.
We also caught about 20
-like fish (this will be new for me) and over 30
and about a dozen
(neither of the latter I need, since I'm breeding both), plus about 40 doradids of various sizes and at least 2 species mixed together. Also caught angelfish (whatever species is here in the Nanay) and LOTS (I'd guess close to 100, all of which we let go) of festivums, and we got 2 large peacock cichlids and a nearly 2 foot long
.
But no
along the shores, even though we know other fishermen catch them along this stretch.
The hardest work was dragging large floating mats of aquatic vines against the shore (some mats covering an area of 20+ feet x 15+ feet of water) in order to effectively use the seine, and in two cases we had to wiggle free submerged dead burnt tree stumps and throw them out from inside the seining area so the seine wouldn't snag).
Exhausting work, and I developed some kind of contact allergy after being in the water for so many hours. I ached all over and had a weird skin parasthesia which felt like fiberglass stabbing my skin. Fortunately, 8 hours later, with benadryl, motrin and two showers, the symptoms subsided. And I'm glad it did subside. Last thing I want is the airport authorities to look at me and deny entry to plane thinking I'm infected with something contagious.
Internet is still bad, so we'll have to wait longer for photos.
Cheers, Eric
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