In August (of 2019) my PhD student Diego Elias and I traveled to Haiti; a place I’ve been trying to collect from since my first fish expedition trip 15 years ago. Back in 2004 I was a PhD student, and I was in the Dominican Republic, the country on the other side of the island of Hispaniola. Back then I was greener than a Louisiana lawn in Spring, I learned a lot the hard way that first trip. Never-the-less it was a fruitful trip that taught me that there is no substitute for studying your research animals in the field. What I was studying then was a supposedly endemic Dominican cichlid species that was supposedly different from the one on the Haitian side. I would end up synonymizing those two species into one based on some additional Haitian samples that I was loaned, but I always regretted not having gone over the Central mountain range to the Haitian side. Haiti seemed close, but still very far, if not physically than culturally. The biggest barrier would be safety, I was told by my Dominican colleagues that we would need to rent a helicopter and have armed guards to collect on the other side. I didn’t know it would take me 15 years to get to the western side of Hispaniola and that very little of what I heard about this country would turn out to be true.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
-T.S. Eliot
This trip was part of the last leg of my National Science Foundation grant ‘Not So Fast: Historical biogeography of freshwater fishes in Central America and the Greater Antilles.” The freshwater fishes of Haiti are special; this country has one of the largest freshwater lakes in the Caribbean and some of the most unique fauna in the Neotropics. That largest freshwater lake, Lake Miragoâne, is said to have an endemic radiation of fishes in the genus Limia, a group of poecilids (also called mollies or livebearers because they have live young). Some have called this endemic radiation of Limia a miniature version of the famous cichlid radiation in the Rift Lakes of East Africa. For a country that is only 10,000 square miles, it has almost a dozen endemics; in contrast the entire island of Puerto Rico has zero endemic freshwater fishes. Another reason it is special is that Hispaniola is a composite island made up of several other islands smooshed together, we would spend much of our time on the “south Paleo island” around the capital Port-au-Prince which appears to have remained somewhat isolated from the other geological portions of the island.
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| Limia from Lake Miragoâne |
Unfortunately, despite all their freshwater, Haiti has no practicing ichthyologists. There are plenty of people working in agriculture and business and many people are living off their land. We are often presented with the narrative of how this country is the poorest in the West, but that is only if you measure wealth in GDP; many people here are far from poverty, they have nice homes, many goats, some farmland – they lack debt and many would be better off than most of us if we suddenly lost our jobs. Whenever Haiti is mentioned in the news of a Western website we are fed images of a downtrodden country with open sewers and earthquake- and hurricane-ravaged people. Civil unrest did thwart our attempts to travel there several times, as Haiti was under a Level 4: “Do Not Travel” State Department advisory for much of 2019. Finally heading over there in August (at a manageable Level 3: “Reconsider Travel”) I was expecting to be documenting extinction and counting all the introduced tilapia I would collect instead of natives. Instead what we found is a vibrant country with many pristine natural areas with remarkable, resilient and industrious people.
We were hosted by Martin Reith a botanist working as the curator of the Jardin Botanique des Cayes. Martin is a German who grew up with a strong interest in aquarium fishes and was eager to help us. Dr. Debra Baker from Kansas put us in contact with her student, Wilnise Louise, who is doing her Master’s in agriculture in the north “Le Cap” part of the island. I did not want to collect in another country without locals so I insisted we bring a local student along, and I’m very glad we did – Wilnise was a wonderful contributor to our efforts. We also needed a driver and someone who knew the roads. Martin is relatively new to Haiti, having lived there for less than a year, although you wouldn’t know it from his impeccable Creole. He lived in the Dominican Republic in the five years previous to his move, so he did know the island, but he did not yet feel comfortable driving around Haiti. We hired a truck and a driver, Simain Dimmension, and he would also be an integral part of the “L’Equippe Poisson.”
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| L’Equippe Poisson |
Our trip did not start out well, we turned out of the airport and picked up some bottled waters that had the strong taste of salt. As we would be relying on bottled water during the trip, this saltiness was not a good sign. In most countries I visit I take my chances and drink the water from the tap if the locals do that – the locals in Haiti were all drinking bottled or bagged water. After getting our first taste of cold salt water, we turned right from the airport and were excited to be headed towards our first field site when we got stuck in traffic – for three hours!!! Apparently, the major road we needed to take was flooded; we were not moving at all and ultimately had to turn around and find a place in Port-au-Prince to stay. After a long day of travel (we had left Baton Rouge at 5am), the ‘Prestige’ beers and even the fried tilapia tasted great, although I grew concerned that we would see no other species of fish during our trip.
Mercifully we were able to leave Port-au-Prince without incident the next morning. Our first destination was Lake Miragoâne, where I had dreamed of collecting for so long. After some minor sampling along the way we ended up at a little bathing area where people were drinking and partying around the huge lake. It appeared to be the only easily accessible entry for some distance. We were a curiosity to the crowd at first, and I am used to that, foreigners coming in with big fancy fishing nets often draw a crowd, but I noticed the space between the revelers and our crew was shrinking. We were doing our best to explain what we were doing to the people closest to us, but there were lots of people and not everyone got the full story. Most of the people around us were men and they were, let’s say - not at all sober.
Despite there being bathers nearby we could see that there were lots of small fish in the water. A little secret about the cichlids and mollies is that they like dirty water, the additional nutrients from the soap and grime in the water is like junk food to them. The water wasn’t that dirty really, just with some added soapy nutrients, but we knew it would be a good site for collecting some of the endemics from this lake. We explained to a few people around us what we were doing and why, but word did not spread. We entered the water and the crowd around us closed in, the water was very muddy were we entered, which is why there were no bathers in that section. With Diego and I half submerged pulling a large seine the crowd descended and the mood changed quickly from a party atmosphere to more of a skeptical mob - people started picking out our fish and some were helping us put them into containers, others were yelling. Before I knew it four drunk guys were walking off with our seine. It was chaotic, people going in multiple directions with our gear, it turns out that some inebriated guys thought they were going to get paid for collecting fish for us. Although I’m happy to help people out there was no way I could start handing out bills in the mess that was going on. In the end we were able to get our gear back and hop back in our truck, but some of locals were not happy that we were leaving. A few of the men were demanding money ‘for their trouble’ – it was clear something had to be done. Diego passed them a bottle of rum and that did the trick. That was some quick thinking on his part, and it saved us from a rather sticky situation.
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| Our sampling sites in Haiti. (Created by Regina Champagne.) |
That event reminded me that we did look like an odd cast of characters, with our fancy nets and foreign faces - the locals should mistrust us. Who were we to collect their fish? Although we did explain to some of the people there, not enough of them were around us to hear. The rest were thinking we were coming in gangbusters doing some strange stuff in their water. I don’t blame anyone there for the misunderstanding, I’m just sorry that we didn’t have time to explain to everyone why we were there. We were there to document what of the local fish fauna remains so that we can help protect these freshwaters.
We did get a nice collection of fish even from that one spot on Miragoâne. We ended up driving down the road a bit and finding a spot that seemed relatively quiet to process the fish, but even here we were quickly crowded by a group of a dozen or so people, but this time they were a curious and sober bunch, and I was able to use my limited French to explain what was happening. We also had Wilnise and Simain participating in processing the samples. What we were doing must have looked rather strange: taking parts of fish and putting them into small laboratory vials, then tagging fish with plastic labels. Diego had a photobox and was taking some really nice images, which the crowd took great interest in; these images are important because these tiny poecilids are very hard to tell apart. I took the opportunity to explain how to differentiate the introduced species from the natives to the locals. Tilapia, which has been here since the 1950s – introduced by the United Nations to increase protein availability – is not easy to distinguish from the native cichlid, Nandopsis haitiensis, and many locals did not know that tilapia was introduced from Africa. Likewise, the poecilids, which are not a food fish, was not a species most of the locals pay much attention to. It was a proud moment when I heard Wilnise explaining the scientific goals of our trip in Creole to the locals. This was the start of her training: I wanted her to become an expert on Haitian fishes in a country that lacked such an expert.
We sampled in various parts of Lake Miragoâne over the next few days, driving around looking for areas we could conveniently, and somewhat quietly, enter. The lake is only 10 square miles but remarkably has seven endemic fish species, partly due to the variable habitat. On one memorable trip we went down to a spot where water taxi’s (wood or metal canoes) take people to different areas around the lake. The spot was actually between Lake Miragoâne proper and what was being called Petite Miragoâne, which were connected by a shallow waterway that must unite the lakes into one during periods of flooding. We went by canoe through a mass of thick reeds and water lilies, with jacanas, dragonflies and other wildlife. I was very happy; especially as the channel opened up to the bigger lake. The area was pristine and gorgeous; the big flat lake with dark green water was surrounded by lush mountains on all sides. We were catching plenty of the native Limia that we were after; unfortunately, we were also catching Asian carp that we did not expect to see. This species grows very fast and can reach 30 pounds making it easily the biggest freshwater fish in Haiti, these fish can also alter the environment by removing native vegetation.
After Miragoâne we went west to Les Cayes where Martin lives and works as curator. Les Cayes is the world's largest supplier of vetiver, a fragrant bunch-grass from India that is used in perfumes, cosmetics and aromatherapy. You could smell the vetiver rather strongly as you entered the town. It was also interesting seeing breadfruit growing and being eaten. Having gone to Tahiti last year, where breadfruit originates, I couldn’t help to think of Captain’s Bligh whose men famously mutinied on his ship the HMS Bounty in 1789; the mission of that ship was to bring breadfruit to Haiti and other parts of the West Indies (there are five movie versions of ‘Mutiny of the Bounty’ the most famous one being with Marlon Brando).
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| Dormitator maculatus |
Les Cayes is in one of the most southern stretches of Haiti, and almost at its Western edge. In spots near the coastline I was reminded of Tahiti, with aqua blue waters and the surrounding mountains. But there is also an awful tide of sargassam drifting in from further out in the Atlantic that is currently sullying the coastline. Luckily, we were not after Caribbean fishes, we were focusing on freshwaters. In Les Cayes, we collected some sleepers (Eleotridae) and gobies that are associated with more brackish habitat. One of my favorites is the fat sleeper Dormitator maculatus that has a large bright blue spot behind the head – they look a bit ridiculous but they’ve managed a pretty wide range. We hope to one day look at the population genetics of this beast that can be found throughout a wide part of the Neotropics and supposedly as far north as North Carolina. We sampled in the lovely Botanical Gardens where we saw lots of amazing plants and saw white necked crows and other neat fauna. Although this site was lovely I couldn’t help but notice the many fishes we would see in the ditches around town, after ignoring them for a few days – it is always best to look away from the open sewers in the city center– I decided I would go down into one.
