Beneath the river’s surface, tiny fish shelter in the flooded forest.
Beneath the river’s surface, tiny fish shelter in the flooded forest.
“There’s a good chance of seeing cardinal tetras today!” Scott tells us. Glowing electric blue and radiant crimson, like the rich robes of high bishops of the Catholic Church for whom they are named, these stunning inch-long beauties are among the most popular aquarium fish in the world. They’re found only in the Río Negro and in Venezuela’s largest river, the Orinoco.
Since we boarded our boats in Manaus, we’ve had two beautiful days on the water, happily swapping shoveling January snow for watching a green wall of jungle slide by as pink dolphins surface and toucans shoot like arrows across the river. Some of us have been fishing for piranhas from the top deck. But now, on our third day, we’re especially eager to see cardinal tetras swimming free in their wild habitat.
The Dorinha has dropped anchor, so we can step gingerly from its lower deck to board motorized canoes for a trip up the Aturia River. It’s our first foray into a tributary of the Río Negro. By canoe, it’s about an hour to our first stop—an area with shallow rapids and scoured sinkholes, with water so stained with natural tannins it’s as red as burgundy wine. On the way, we stop briefly to watch a single howler monkey running along the thick branch of an ancient fig tree with buttress roots. We spot a sloth near the top of a spindly cecropia tree.
“It’s tricky here—we’ve got to duck!” Scott tells his younger son, Daniel, as our canoe passes beneath the branches of a tree partially submerged in the flooded forest.
In some places the water is so mirror smooth that you cannot tell where the air ends and the water begins. It’s easy to see why local people speak of an enchanted world beneath the river, a world that mirrors our own, the way the water mirrors the trees and the sky.
As we watch kingfishers zip across the river and red, gold, and blue parrots alight in the canopies of the trees, beneath our canoe, fish fly like birds between tree branches. It’s the wet season, a time of plenty, when abundance overflows like the riverbanks.
Rafael shows the team the fish he has captured.
We pass trees that seem to be barely holding their crowns above water. Life piles upon life: Some trees are encumbered with termite nests bigger than basketballs; others are ornamented like Christmas trees with the purselike, woven-grass nests of orapendulas—big black birds with blue eyes and bright yellow tails. We pass trees that seem to be exploding with orange flower petals and others hung with seedpods that look like round doll heads with crimson crewcuts.
Finally we come to our first stop. It’s a shallow area with ruby-colored water. We’re hot, eager to enter the cool, dark river. Within a minute, tiny fish are nipping at our skin. We put on our facemasks and lower our bodies into the water to see the fish. We count three different species of tetras. Scott identifies them right away: Copella, or splash tetras, are spotted inch-long schooling fish with red and black fins. There’s a group of Bryconops with red tails and black and yellow fins. Another species is silvery and slender, with a black stripe down each side. Scott identifies this as one of the seventy species of Characidium tetras. Many of these live in fast-running water, and some have fins so strong they can grip the rocks at the edges of waterfalls.
But no cardinals. They’re shyer than many other tetras; it’s no wonder they’re more difficult to find. On we go to a second site, this one with waterfalls. In the shallows, sand carried by rushing water has scoured three-foot-deep holes in the rock. Past the falls, Rafael Strella, our Brazilian guide, cuts a short path through the watery forest, leading us to more wonderfully smooth rocks and sandy bottoms. With Scott in the lead, we plunge into the shallows with our masks and snorkels.
We fan out. It’s important to move quietly and slowly, and it’s best to stay in one place for a while, Scott explains. These tiny fish frighten easily. I stick by Marion Lepzelter, who is thirty-two, a volunteer at the New England Aquarium and with Project Piaba. She’s hoping to film many of these Río Negro species in the wild for the project’s website, projectpiaba.org.
“Be the driftwood,” she advises me, and we both float as still as sticks. Our reward: from behind some rocks, two flattened disk-shaped fish, their slender faces masked in black and their sides decorated with mazelike patterns of green and fawn, come swimming toward us like rolling coins. Because of their shape, they’re known as discus fish; they’re found only in the Amazon basin. But as quick as a flash, they disappear. “They may be guarding a nest!” Marion whispers to me as she pulls her head from the water. Discus are cichlids, a large and diverse group of fish related to perch, and soon more cichlids swim into view: Pike cichlids. Pale flag cichlids. Checkerboard cichlids. Marion is thrilled to find them.
But where are the cardinals?
Scott is only a few feet away. He’s investigating an area near a wall of smooth rock, where a sandy, leafy hole meets a large tree root.
A striped headstander.
“I found them!” he cries. “There—down in this hole over here!”
Hiding in eight inches of water, three cardinals are in shadow—but they seem to glow in the dark. “Each fish moves a little differently,” explains Scott. Rather than mere swimming, their movement reminds me of the twinkling of stars.
Why do these fish dazzle and shimmer? No one knows for sure. Scott thinks it might help them school. Or they might dazzle their predators just as they dazzle us—and just as we are mesmerized by their magical lights, they turn and, like shooting meteorites, vanish from sight.
The three cardinal tetras disappear before Marion can film them. “They only come out for their king!” Marion says to Scott.
How do you find a handful of inch-long fish in a thousand-mile river?
The next day, we try again. Overnight, we had traveled farther upstream, and we plan to scout a new area. We’re hoping to find water where it will be easy to see and film cardinal tetras. But after thirty minutes of motoring our canoe through a maze of drowned trees and draping vines, one thing is clear—and it’s not the water.
“We were hoping to find clearer water for photography,” says Scott, “but failing that, I’m looking for good habitat.” We arrive at an area with gently sloping banks and, growing beneath the water, baby trees with slender trunks and branches that may shelter these shy, tiny fish.
“Watch out for this saw grass,” Scott says as we disembark from the canoe. He points to the tall, whiplike blades with serrated edges growing around and in the water. “It will grab you,” he warns his kids. “It’s like barbed wire, and it’ll hurt.”
Scott slips into the water as gently and easily as a person falling asleep on a hot day. Wearing stubby fins and his snorkel and mask, the big man becomes weightless in the water’s embrace. He not so much swims like a fish in the water as he floats like a cloud in the sky, gently, patiently, waiting for the piaba to come.
While Marion and I are still taking off our shoes, Scott has gone to work. “He’s already finding fish!” Marion says. “Yup, he’s the fish finder!” echoes four-year-old Daniel. While Theo heads to a different spot with his mom, Daniel climbs on his dad’s back as if he were riding a dolphin.
Less than a minute passes before Scott pulls his face from the water. “Crenicichla regani!” he announces, speaking the species’ Latin name. Then, for my benefit, he uses the common name, the name you’d find posted by its tank in a pet store: checkerboard cichlid. It’s a beautiful black and silver checked fish that’s called xadrez shah drayz in Brazilian Portuguese—“the chessboard.”
“Cichlids are related to sunfish and bass,” he explains. “And a lot of times, dwarf cichlids are found with cardinal tetras.”
Scott has found productive hunting grounds. “There are cool little fish of many species here everywhere!” he says.
Marion joins him in the shallow water. Within minutes, she spots a gorgeous tiny fish with a pink neon stripe, a species she doesn’t recognize. “It’s like a pencil fish without the black,” she says. “It could be a new species! Do you think,” she asks Scott, “that we could be seeing fish that are undescribed by science?”
“Yes,” answers Scott firmly.
Scott swims in the Amazon, looking for tropical fish.
A checkerboard cichlid.
A juvenile dwarf pike.
A pristella tetra.
A Cupid cichlid.
Scott’s four-year-old son, Daniel, rides his dad’s back as the two explore the river for fish.
Photo © Charles Doughty
“And what would you call a plain silver tetra?” asks Marion.
“Anything you want,” answers Scott. Like the pencil fish with the pink stripe, it could be a new species too. Scientists estimate that only one-quarter of the plants and animals on Earth have been identified. Hundreds, if not thousands, of the fish in the Amazon may remain as yet undescribed by scientists, undiscovered by anyone but the people and other animals who live here.
“Well, there’s one right now under the checkerboard cichlid,” says Marion.
Scott has swum ahead about fifty yards. The water’s surface is only two to three feet above the soft, leaf-littered bottom. But because of sticks, saw grass, and stingrays (they often hide buried in the bottom, and a sting from the poison-tipped spines on their tails can hurt for days) as well as the possibility of sudden drop-offs, it’s smarter to swim than to walk. Plus there’s less chance of kicking up dirt to cloud the water.
“Let’s see . . .” Scott mumbles through his snorkel—a “language” we call Snorkelese that sounds like it’s spoken through the nose. “Right at first glance, a lot of really good species are just coming out!”
But I am frustrated. I can see none of them—until Scott shows me how.
There’s a technique for making “invisible” little fish suddenly appear. “Look for good habitat,” Scott tells me. “They like trees and cover. It’s not really looking for fish; it’s looking for habitat.
“At first, you scare them off,” he continues. “If you chase them, they’ll swim away. But if you stay still, they get curious. Stop and wait. Get in fairly deep, in a place where you’re comfortable, and just stay still and watch. The fish,” he promises, “will come to you.”
We float among the submerged tree branches, our faces in the water, our ears above. We hear the whistles and burbles of birds, sounds as liquid and cool as the dark water. From previous trips to the Amazon, I recognize the rattling call of the kingfisher; the high, ascending song of the green-tailed jacamar, which increases in tempo like a Ping-Pong ball trapped under a paddle; the screams of a pair of parrots. They are surely discussing their errands as they wing just inches from each other through a sky silvery with coming rain.
And in a minute I see that Scott was right: like magic, little fish appear. Silvery scales flash. Gossamer fins flutter. Some come close enough to nibble gently on my hands.
“I’ve got a couple of checkerboards and some other tetras over here,” calls Marion. “And there are definitely actual pencil fish over here. A whole school of them just swam by me . . .”
“Some of these fish have red fins, and some of them have black spots on the fins!” another snorkeler calls to Scott.
The red of the fins doesn’t register with Scott. He is red-green colorblind. For most of us, color is the main way we identify fish, as well as birds and many other animals. But Scott knows fish so well he doesn’t need color. He identifies them by their pattern and shape and by the unique way each species moves.
We’ve been in for only half an hour and already Scott has spotted several dozen species, some he doesn’t recognize. “Watch for the yellowish fins of Biotodoma cupido,” he spouts in Snorkelese. This fish is also known as the Cupid cichlid, and Scott doesn’t want us to miss it, as the species is such a beauty—a deep-bodied fish with lemon yellow fins and a black dot surrounded with yellow on each of its sides.
Many of these fish are as interesting in their habits as they are striking in appearance. For instance, the one spot eartheater grabs a mouthful of dirt and silt, sifts it for nutrients, then spits the rest out through its gills. The spotted headstander has an upturned mouth, and while it’s turned upside down, it feeds on slimy bacteria that adhere to the surface of plants. The marbled hatchetfish—the one that flies out of the water to escape predators—has its mouth on top of its head! Why? Because food often falls into the water from above.
Other species we’re seeing here are dwarf cichlids—called Apistogramma gibbiceps—small, with blue scales and a spade-shaped tail, and Satanoperca lilith, with reddish fins, a black spot, and golden eyes. “I have some of those behind my desk at the aquarium,” Scott says. And many others are on display for the public in his Amazon tank.
“When I see this,” he says, “I think, How can I make my exhibits at the New England Aquarium look more like this?”
Theo, seven, enjoys an encounter with a pink dolphin who has learned to expect fish from an Amazon family. Theo is Scott and Tania’s older son.
Photo © Charles Doughty
Not many people get to see these beautiful fish in the wild as we’re doing. But if these creatures are to survive in the wild, it’s essential that people around the world care about protecting them. That’s part of what Scott’s doing here, too.
“I’m making this a goal,” he announces. “For people standing in a cement building on Boston Harbor—even if it’s snowing out to be able to see this.”
Keith wants photos of fish swimming through the branches of the underwater trees. One morning, we persuade our guide, Rafael, to take Keith, me, and fellow Project Piaba travelers Dan Rabb and Jason Spiro via motorized canoe to an area Keith calls the Valley of the Drowned Trees. The water here is very dark. Rafael ties our canoe to one of the saplings, near what we think might be shallows. But how deep is the water? We can’t see. We poke Dan’s GoPro pole in; it’s only five feet long and doesn’t touch bottom. Where is the bottom? And more important, who is on the bottom?
Keith doesn’t want to step on a STINGRAY. These flattened relatives of sharks hide buried in mud and sand. If disturbed, a stingray might strike out with its tail, inflicting pain from its venomous tip that burns for days. (One of these actually killed the TV star and conservationist Steve Irwin when the barb freakishly penetrated his heart.) It’s just one of the animals visitors have dubbed the Seven Deadly Plagues of the Amazon. As Keith readies his photo gear, Rafael takes a moment to introduce to us the stories associated with the six other plagues:
The giant catfish called JAO (pronounced “Jow—OOH”) is known as the Monster of the Amazon. Growing to more than three hundred pounds, it is big enough to swallow you whole—but prefers to drag you down to the depths to drown you.
The ELECTRIC EEL can generate more than six hundred volts—five times the power of a U.S. wall socket. That’s strong enough to knock a horse off its feet—and easily enough to kill a human.
The ANACONDA, the largest and heaviest snake in the world, can grow to more than three hundred pounds. Wrapping twenty feet of muscular coils around its prey and squeezing it to death, this giant snake can eat anything it wants, including jaguars—and people.
The BLACK CAIMAN, the largest predator in the Amazon basin, is the biggest member of the alligator family, growing to twenty feet. Lurking in the shallows of slow-moving rivers, it may seize prey as big as a tapir (an animal that looks like a cross between a hippo, a pig, and an elephant). Humans make easy prey.
The PIRANHA hunts in packs, the way wolves do. After President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Amazon in 1913, he famously wrote that schools of these razor-toothed fish are capable of feeding frenzies that can strip a cow to a skeleton in seconds.
The CANDIRU is probably the scariest of them all. There are several species, but the smallest ones pack the biggest punch. The locals say that if you pee in the water, a candiru will follow the urine to its source—right up inside you—where (yes, it gets worse) it erects spines to hold it in place while it feasts on your flesh. The only way to remove it is by surgery.
Rafael assures us that all Seven Deadly Plagues can be found here in the water.
Then Keith goes overboard.
One of the many species of candiru catfish—perhaps the most feared of the so-called Seven Deadly Plagues.
Keith took this self-portrait in the dark waters of the Río Negro.
“This is so strange!” he exclaims. “Twigs are bumping against my legs. It’s weird. You can’t tell if what’s touching you is a rock or a stingray or a caiman. The things I do for you, Sy!”
Keith submerges completely. We wait in the boat; he doesn’t want the rest of us to go in lest we stir up the bottom and cloud the pictures.
Keith spouts through his snorkel. His breathing reminds us of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Certainly our current location, with its dark, mysterious waters full of unseen lives, recalls the setting for the famous horror movie.
“You know what’s totally amazing?” he says, surfacing and withdrawing his snorkel from his mouth. “There’s a light wall. The first six inches or so are light, relative to the rest of the water. But I can barely see my hands, and I can’t see my feet at all.”
Keith dives again. We see him testing his camera’s flash; it looks like an underwater lightning storm. He spouts as he surfaces and tells us, “Your legs are bumping against a lot of things—all of which feel like something death-defying! But I don’t understand why I’m not seeing fish.”
Above us, a green-and-rufous kingfisher chatters. He’s looking for fish too.
Though Keith has seen no fish, his experience is still thrilling. He’s exploring an underwater forest, a world like ours yet not like ours, familiar and strange at once. In our northern forests we might see lichens growing on trees; here you might see freshwater sponges growing on them. And though we’re used to birds flying through branches in our forests, birds show up in flooded forests, too—as Keith discovers.
BAM! Right in front of him, the kingfisher slams into the water like a lawn dart!
“*%$&!” Keith spouts, surfacing in alarm. “What was that?” An electric eel? An anaconda?
The flooded forest is different from any habitat Keith has explored in more than a quarter century of scuba diving, snorkeling, and photographing in the sea. “In the ocean, there’s a big fish that might bite you”—but at least you can see it. “It’s helpful to anticipate what might take you down.”
He submerges again, this time in shallower water. And finally the fish appear. We can see some of them from the canoe, revealed by a single ray of sunlight striking the water. “It’s amazing how it looks at first like nothing is there,” says Dan, “and then, suddenly, you see them all!”
To our left, in deeper water, Rafael spots a peacock bass. “He’s hunting the other fish,” he tells us—which is surely why all the fish were hiding earlier.
Beneath the water, Keith moves forward slowly through the dark, holding his big camera in his two hands in front of his face as he kicks with his fins, careful not to stir up the bottom and cloud the water. Finally he is in water shallow enough to stand, and he bends at a 90-degree angle, like an open book, in order to steady his camera for a macro shot. And then—
“Pffthth!” Startled, Keith shoots the water from his snorkel and surfaces in a hurry. “There was a catfish right under my fin!” Was it the dreaded jao?
Keith ducks back beneath the water and holds still. And now the small fish come. In the red-tinted murk he can see inch-long fish with spotted fins, others with black stripes, still more with upturned mouths. They are all around him now—but, alas, not close enough for his macro lens. He surfaces to report: “The fish here are little, they’re camouflaged, they’re subtle. This is as pretty a place as you can imagine, though,” he says.
Rafael tells us it’s time to get back to the Dorinha. Reluctantly, Keith swims over to the canoe. As he fins toward us, we notice that he has an entourage. Dozens of little fish trail in his wake, like the tail on a comet. Is this some kind of fishy joke? “Great,” says Keith. “They’re all following me now.”