Both species are also top predators in their native habitats, feeding on smaller fish (which puts Kerala’s small native species at risk). While alligator gar can measure up to three metres in length, arapaima is five metres long and weigh up to a whopping 200 kg. Calling the 2018 floods one of the most “significant threats” to Kerala’s fish diversity, the team adds that the presence of alien arapaima ( Arapaima gigas) and alligator gar ( Atractosteus spatula) here is a serious concern for several reasons.īoth alien species can grow to be enormous. But this diversity is at risk due to ‘fugitive’ fish such as the arapaima and gar that escaped from aquaculture facilities and farms during the floods, claim the authors. Kerala’s river systems, which the authors study, are home to around 200 species of fish, 30 percent of which are endemic to the region. In their communication in the journal Current Science in May this year, the team call for an urgent nationwide scheme to eradicate such alien fish species.Īrapaimas are air-breathers, a feature that could help them survive even in polluted habitats. The presence of these alien fish – which are being farmed illegally in the state – could bode ill for Kerala’s native fish diversity, claim the scientists.
These post-flood field surveys revealed that fishers had caught arapaima and gar from four flood-affected rivers in Kerala: the Periyar, Muvattupuzha, Kurumali and Chalakkudy. Like the arapaima, the gar too is alien: its native habitats are the freshwater lakes of North America.Īlso read: Genetic Study Says Humans Drove Cave Bears to Extinction, Not Climate Arjun (of Thiruvananthapuram’s Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management) and Unmesh Katwate and Rajeev Raghavan (of Kochi’s Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies – KUFOS) – also obtained information on the presence of the alligator gar, another fish never recorded in Kerala’s waters before. Biju Kumar (University of Kerala), Raj, C.P. Genetic tests revealed that it was the arapaima, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish, endemic to the Amazon in South America.Īfter a month’s such work of analysing news reports, social media photographs and videos of ‘strange’ fish caught after the 2018 floods, and re-confirming sightings with local fishermen and fish vendors, the team – of A. His journey, however, was not in vain he was able to procure a small piece of fish tissue from the head. But all he saw of the fish was its severed head: it had already been sold in the market. WhatsApp photographs of the unusual fish brought Smrithy Raj, a doctoral researcher studying fishes at Thiruvananthapuram’s University of Kerala, to the spot in a couple of days.
It measured six feet long and weighed a whopping 41 kilograms. Squirming around at the base was a fish he had never seen before: flat-headed and sporting large scales tinted in pink and cream. When a final heave raised the net slightly above water, Kallarackal could not believe his eyes. As he began to haul the net up, he realised that it was unusually heavy something large was wriggling in the net, causing it to shake. Though life was far from normal in Thrissur’s coastal Kodungalloor, 48-year-old Jaison Kallarackal was at his Chinese fishing net at dusk to land the day’s catch. It was September 7, barely a month after the floods of 2018 had wrecked large parts of Kerala.
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