Page 68 - AlertDiver_Spring2013

66 | spring 2013
one another over who would be my aquatic companion.
They circled me boisterously, coveting my attention. As
the light waned on our return to our home on stilts, my
thoughts turned to the challenges these congenial beings
will face. These flagship animals are thought to be in decline
due to hunting, fishing, competition with fisherman and
the notion that eating their flesh leads to enhanced sexual
ability. Like performers at the Amazon Theatre, the boto
put on their finest show for us — a plea, perhaps, for their
continued existence. The “Fight Against the Extermination
of the Amazon Pink River Dolphin” has become a rallying
cry to promote these animals’ continuing survival (see the
information box).
Pirarucu
Before we left the Amazon, we learned about a location at
the southern edge of the region that had pools of clear water
where we would find one of most prehistoric fish on earth,
the pirarucu (Arapaima gigas). With eyes on the tops of
their heads, these armor-scaled, bony-tongued fish evolved
to breathe air, which gives them an advantage in the hypoxic
conditions of the Amazon, especially during the dry season.
These fast-growing fish can reach 350 pounds in only five
years. Many of the largest specimens are gone, having been
fished out to satisfy the appetites of those who consider its
flesh a delicacy. Still, tremendous monsters continue to live
in some of the deepest and most remote reaches of the rivers.
When we arrived, the temperature had dropped to nearly
40°F — unheard of in those parts during that time of year.
We awoke looking at our breath. As the skies cleared and
temperatures warmed, we could see the enormous fish
basking close to the surface in the shallow waters of a lake.
Persuading one to cooperate with a camera wasn’t easy, as
silt blew up off the bottom with every mistaken move. By
midday they were still cautious but a little more comfortable
with our presence, and we could approach within inches of
their torpedo-shaped bodies.
The Pantanal
We flew to Cuiabá with the hope of photographing the
animals of the Pantanal, a vast tropical wetland covering
between 54,000 and 81,000 square miles. A single dusty and
poorly maintained dirt road with 120 wooden bridges, the
Transpantaneira highway (MT-060) cuts through the state
of Mato Grosso across the Pantanal. We traveled there for
caimans, jaguars and endangered giant river otters, but in
retrospect it was an embarrassingly short list in light of the
plethora of wildlife we would come to know. Our guide, a
renowned ornithologist who literally wrote the authoritative
book on birds of the Pantanal, spent the next week with us.