Collecting in Rio Caumé

About 7 km north of Boa Vista is the Rio Caumé, a small, clear water river.

First, I collected around the shore, catching tetras and a few catfish. After I had a decent sample in the beach I donned scuba gear and jumped in. Pretty much the first fish I saw was a 8 inch in diameter Stingray in the sand below me. It  spooked and I hurried back to the shore to get my water shoes.

Once on the other side, there was a small creek flowing into the river.

Here the habitat looked much more promising. There were lots of leaves in the sand substrate and tons of fish.

The first net brought up a bunch of Apistogramma sp. which I put into breather bags. They were especially easy to catch here, and almost every net had at least one.

I also caught a few juvenile Hoplias sp., lots of tetras, an Aequidens sp. and even a few dwarf Pike cichlids, probably Cr. regani, or Cr. notopthalmus.

 

I went upriver a good way and caught a few Apistogramma rupununi “savanna” One interesting catch was a tiny, one inch long wood catfish in the leaves, one of the only catfish caught in the stream. The only other one was a Candiru.

Back at the main river I kept fishing by the beach, I caught my first Rineloricaria of the trip and an unusual Gymnotid eel with a black tail