Article © Robin Warne, uploaded January 01, 2002.

You never knew what you would find at the exporters. To give you an idea of scale, that overflow pipe is about 2" diameter. That's an adonis pleco in the bottom right, also in there are Megalodoras irwini, Armoured Cats, other Plecos and a few cichlids.

At the same exporters. The fish in the vat are all Corydoras - and you wonder how contaminants happen.

Approaching (via boat-taxi) a floating fish holding station. This is where fish are kept after collection but before transferred onto the exporters.

Giles inspects some of the fish present.

Still at the floating fish station, here are some big rays and little red tail catfishes.

The fringes of Iquitos from the air. These houses are all on stilts to keep them above the changing water levels all year round.

Collecting (using a large two-man seine net) in the open river. The trick here is to trap the fish against the reeds at the river bank and them scare them out into the net. In this habitat we netted Hypoptopoma, Giant River Hatchets, the odd Angelfish and various other medium sized cichlids.

Typical jungle floor habitat. Here the water would be from less than 1" to 18" deep. The deeper the water the more mud was beneath it. Often you went waist deep in water but thigh deep in mud. In this habitat we caught Corydoras, various Talking cats, Rivulus, Apistogramma and assorted tetras including neons.

Those of you who are of squeamish nature look away. Underneath that butchers table is the remains of a red-tail. What size would that have been in one piece?

A very pretty, (and considerably smaller and more intact) unidentified Pimelodid we collected.

A remarkably well camouflaged (it's a leaf-mimic bush Katydid of undetermined species) insect we encountered on a night time jungle walk.

Know locally as "sapo grande" this is a decidedly indignant marine toad (Bufo marinus) also known in Australia, where it is introduced, as the Cane Toad. We literally fell over this fellow on a daytime collecting trip in the jungle.

A tree frog photographed at night. This appears to be a spotted color morph of the perplexing tree Frog, Hyla triangulum.

The daytime colouration of another tree frog. This one is the red-spotted tree frog, Hyla punctata.

Cetopsis sp. caught on hook and line. The largest one's SL somewhere around 13". A very interesting albeit thoroughly unpleasant fish.

Vulture catfish (Calophysus macropterus) caught on hook and line - this was the results of about an hours fishing off the back of the boat.

Robin captioned this picture "Two South American birds we met". Classic 1970's British humour. Our two birds are in fact the orange-winged Amazon parrot (left) and the festive Amazon parrot (right).

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