Greetings from Cameroon

[Andre]

Hi guys

I was lucky enough to get a job which sent me to Cameroon. Hopefully I will be able to go see some of the collection localities here. Do any of you know the procedure needed to export fish out of Cameroon?

Keep well

Andre

 

[Andre]

Since I forgot my nets in Cape Town I went to the Joupwe (the fishing district of Douala) today to order a sein and hand net. The net will be constructed tonight and I can pick it up tommorow. It worked out to about $75, which is probably much more than a local would have paid, but ... TIA

I finally got my first view of the Wourit river and saw the first "live" fish since arriving in Cameroon:

These guys were still moving in the bucket, but will probably end up on somebodies plate tonight

We often buy these fish for dinner. They are roasted over an open fire and served with spices (as most other foods in Cameroon).

My nets will be finished by tommorow, and we are going to Limbe and Moliwe over the weekend, so hopefully I will have enough time to do some exploring and fishing

The internet is pretty slow here at the moment so I did not have time to check the ID's of the fish. Anybody have an idea what they are?

 

[Andre]

I realise I spelled Wouri wrong, but cant seem to edit my previous post

 

[tjudy]

Wouri and Moliwe have some cool fish. Good luck in finding them. What would be really cool is to get some images of what the habitat looks like.

The top fish looks like it could be a cichlid of some sort. The bottom image looks like a Lates species of some kind...?

 

[ed seeley]

I don't think the top one is a cichlid as it has a continuous, rather than broken, lateral line. I know Teleogramma show this feature, but thought they were one of few exceptions? It looks like another member of the Perch family to me.

I would be really grateful if you were able to take underwater pictures too as I've always tried to find picutres of the habitat under the water and failed! But if you haven't got a waterproof camera then lots of above the water pictures would be great to see too!

 

[tjudy]

Now that you point it out it does look more perch-like than cichlid.

 

[Andre]

Ed, the underwater camera is the top of my wish list, but it will probably only happen mid April. I am going to fetch the nets today, and will hopefully be able to take some pictures of the Wouri this time.

 

[ed seeley]

Ed, the underwater camera is the top of my wish list, but it will probably only happen mid April. I am going to fetch the nets today, and will hopefully be able to take some pictures of the Wouri this time.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see ANY pictures! So very jealous of you out there seeing it all for real, though at least I can keep a romantisised version of it from over here sat in my living room! Can't wait to see the Wouri pictures.

 

[Andre]

No problem Ed, I did not get you wrong

I must admit that I am just as jealous of you guys. You have access to so many species of fish at reasonable prices.

We are under quite a heavy workload at the moment, but I hope that I will be able to visit as many rivers and streams as possible to take photos and (hopefully) catch some fish :biggrin:

 

[Andre]

I only managed to fetch the nets today.

Here are the pictures of the Wouri river close to the mouth where it runs into the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately I was not able to use my proper camera, these were also taken with my cellphone.

You can get an idea of where the picture was taken here:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...1,10.041504&spn=1.884741,5.08667&t=h&z=8&om=0

I originally asked for a small Sein net of around 2m. I reckoned that it would be easier to handle a smaller net by myself. In any case, I ended up with 2 nets of 4m each. I guess someone else will have to go along to help me The nets will make a nice showpiece in my fishroom when I get back home. At least the guy that made the nets gave me a quick master class in how to use it, so I'm not totally clueless anymore.

 

[Andre]

I did go to Limbe over the weekend and visited the Botanical Gardens as well as the wildlife center.

Here are some pictures of the Limbe river running through both:

We then drove the a beach about 30 minutes outside of Limbe. A hotel was built within sight of the beach. In the restuarant they had an aquarium with a few sad looking fish.. the red spot on the gill cover leads me to believe that they are in fact Hemichromis elongatus. I asked the waiter to tell me who took care of the tank, and he laughed at me, telling me that nobody takes care of the fish, when the ones in the tank die they just go and fetch a few more from the stream flowing past the restaurant.

The stream contained hundreds of these Hemichromis, but I also spotted some killies, a beatiful blue schooling fish and some kind of catfish.

The stream was also filled with lillies, Crinum natans,Bolbitis heudeloti and lots of Ceratophyllum demersum ( I guess Cameroon also has a problem with invasive weeds ). The Bolbitis were especially beautiful, growing on rocks all along the bank of the stream.

Note the snails on the leaves:

I also found this beautiful species of snail:

Do you perhaps know what this plant is?

Last one for now

 

[ed seeley]

WOW! Great shots. Now I'm really envious! Love the shots of the Hemichromis in the river; they're showing some great colouration.

The plant you asked about looks like Crinum natans to me btw.

 

[tjudy]

Awesome! Keep them coming, and get those nets wet! Are you going to get a chance to net the Limbe? I am not aware of a Pelvicachromis from that river, but I cannot think a a reason why there would not be a P. teaniatus in it.

 

[Andre]

Hi Ted

Unfortunately I had to share transport with a few other people, so I did not actually expect to be able to get close to a river. Next time I am definitely taking the nets along though :biggrin:

 

[westafrica]

Thank you very much for these pics Andre, and for the related dreams they do wake up ! Don't hesitate to post as many of them as possible!

Are there only Hemichromis aff. elongatus on your pics, or may the one on the 7th pic be a Benitochromis? Apart from that I think that the killi on the 6th pic is an Epiplatys, as it presents the characteristic bright scale on top of the head. The plant looks like an Aponogeton to me (correct me if I'm wrong).

I agree with Ted on the point that Pelvicachromis are likely to be found there (even though the location on your pics doesn't look like it's a forest habitat, which I think tends to be confirmed by the concentration of green Hemichromis). Anyway if you have the occasion to fish around the area to be sure...

 

[Andre]

Ok.. It's been an eventful time since my last update. As some of you might know, there was some political unrest in Cameroon a few weeks back, so I had to return to South Africa for a while.

In any case, today I finally managed to go fishing again. Seeing as we could not organize company transport, and my colleague really wanted to play golf at Tiko (close to Moliwe), we decided to organize local transport. So... in the end 5 big guys and one woman stuffed into a tazz (small toyota hatch) and drove the 45km to Tiko (about an hours drive).

The golf course is actually quite awesome, with a very nice backdrop of Mount Cameroon.

Since I do not play golf, I met up with my local friend and drove to Moliwe. I thought that we were going to drive to some village, but instead we stopped in the middle of nowhere and buggered off into the bundus. Our target... Pelvicachromis taeniatus "moliwe".

Luckily the river is quite close to the road and we quickly took off our shoes and started trekking towards the place where my friend knew we could find the Pelvicachromis. (note the guy washing his clothes in the river )

Along the way I tried my hand at catching killiefish in the vegetation.

After walking for a while we spotted a whole bunch of Pelvicachromis taeniatus and Benitochromis nigrodorsalis on the sandy bottom. You might not be able to see them, but there lots of them right there.

I was in the presence of an expert, and we quickly managed to catch quite a lot of fish...

Check out this beautiful Benitochromis nigrodorsalis male.

 

[peterK]

I envy envy envy envy! B. nigrodorsalis male is AWESOME:wink:

 

[ed seeley]

Wow! Nice Chromaphyosemion and Epiplatys killifish but awesome Benitochromis and pelvics! What a great netful of fish! Did you take some back with you?

 

[Andre]

In fact I did take some Killies home with me. They even survived the horrible roads back home.

I was wondering about their scientific name, but soon realized that I had a bunch of Epiplatys houdinii. Most of them managed to jump my "tank" even after I added a net over the top.

I have 3 left, and added an even finer net over this one after finding 3 bokkoms on the floor.

(bokkoms are small dried fish)

 

[Andre]

What was interesting to me was that most of the Benitochromis and Pelvicachromis were swimming in the open over the sandy bottom.

I guess that during the rainy seasons they find caves in the flooded sides of the river to spawn in.