The Vasco da Gama Aquarium will release around 900 endangered freshwater fish this month to repopulate rivers and streams, with populations in the wild that will later be monitored.
According to information released this Friday by the Portuguese Navy, fish will be released next Tuesday in the municipality of Grândola and on March 23 in the municipality of Mafra.
The initiative, a collaboration between the Aquarium and MARE-ISPA (ISPA Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences – University Institute), and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, is part of the “Ex situ conservation of fluvial organisms” project, which aims to reproduce and maintain native species of freshwater fish from the Portuguese fauna, “critically endangered“, for the repopulation of their rivers of origin.
The Navy explains in a statement that the rivers will then be visited and the MARE-ISPA researchers will monitor the fish populations.
This is a way of protecting species considered critically endangered due to the reduction of populations in the wild, caused by several factors: polluting discharges, the increasingly frequent occurrence of long and dry summers, the destruction of vegetation in the riverbanks and the proliferation of plant species. and invasive animals”, underlines the statement.
On Tuesday, 600 Portuguese bogas (Iberochondrostoma lusitanicum), born in the Aquarium and descendants of specimens caught in the same stream, will be released into the Grândola stream.
It is, the statement underlines, a species considered critically endangered that only exists in Portugal, in the hydrographic basins of the Tagus and Sado rivers and in the small streams of the Western region and the region between Sado and Mira.
On the 23rd, 300 western redheads (Achondrostoma occidentale), also born in the Aquarium and descendants of specimens captured in the same river, are released into the Safarujo river, Mafra.
This is also a critically endangered species that only exists in Portugal and only in three rivers: Safarujo, Alcabrichel and Sizandro.
The Portuguese Navy refers in the statement that this month the Vasco da Gama Aquarium has already carried out two more actions of this type, one on Thursday, with the release of 35 Portuguese squirrels (Iberochondrostoma lusitanicum), two southern squirrels (Squalius pyrenaicus) and two green palms (Cobitis paludica), in the Jamor River, from where they had been rescued in the summer due to the drought.
This Friday, in Mértola, 60 saramugos (Anaecypris hispanica) were released, a species considered critically endangered and that only exists in the Iberian Peninsula, in the Guadiana basin.
The Vasco da Gama Aquarium, one of the oldest public aquariums in the world, was inaugurated on May 20, 1898 and delivered in 1901 to the Portuguese Navy.
Source: Observadora
