It is now a familiar sight for the people who live in southern Nigeria along the many rivers, pools and waterfalls of Cross River: biologist Olabisi Atofarati wading through a shallow pool in the jungle wearing Crocs and skinny jeans (“the best protection against leeches”). Colorful fish dart from under rocks as she bends over and, wearing gloves, takes small samples of the water to later be examined in a lab. It earned her the nickname ‘water woman’ locally.
Atofarati is Nigeria’s first female freshwater biologist. The water samples enable her to map the genomes of barely studied fish. She can use environmental DNA to read information about those fish in the water, without catching them. She only studies the material – such as skin cells and waste – that they leave behind in the water. One of the species she examined is the crossriver puffer (Tetraodon pustulatus), which lives only in part of the jungle-rich Cross River basin, both the name of a river and of the state through which the river flows.
The Crossriver puffer is an intelligent predatory fish with bright red spots, about thirty to forty centimeters in size, which, like all puffer fish, inflates into a round, spiky ball when threatened to deter its enemies. Due to their popularity as an ornamental fish, they are now listed as endangered on the Red List of the IUCN nature organization. The rarer the more expensive: on international aquarium websites, one Crossriver puffer costs up to 800 US dollars (just under 700 euros). Atofarati: “At first I wanted to understand why they are endemic [nergens anders levend] and map their taxonomic family tree. But when I found out that they were almost extinct, I became an activist as well as a scientist.”
She discovered that at the beginning of the trade chain, among the indigenous communities in the rainforest, considerably less is paid for rare freshwater fish: “Middlemen come to such a village. Young people in particular are sensitive to this and catch fish in exchange for some cash money. To save the Crossriver puffer fish, I knew I had to start there: in those villages. It was now or never.”
Nigeria is a large, growing exporter of tropical ornamental fish and the trade is barely regulated. The size of the market was estimated last year at around $45 million. Popular species besides puffer fish include cherry-bellied cichlids, African butterfly fish and pennant eels. The vast majority of fish are caught wild, although farmers are increasingly breeding ornamental fish in small earthenware tanks.
I don’t impose my ideas; I just kept coming back, until the people themselves took action
Atofarati: “I just went to those indigenous communities to talk, because I knew that a national ban could take a long time.” She did not come there with scientific stories, but responded to their – as she says – emotional awareness. “They just had to become proud of their fish, which is only found there.”
And that happened: eventually the highest traditional leader of Cross River – Chief Mathew Bissong – arranged a local trade ban on the puffer fish, coupled with a hefty fine. Conservationists came to her to ask how she had managed that, with no organization behind her. And she always talks about the collaboration she was looking for: with women’s groups, youth clubs and traditional leaders. “I don’t impose my ideas; I just kept coming back until people took action themselves.” She is currently trying to achieve the same ban at a higher level.
In strongly patriarchal Nigeria, it is not self-evident that a woman becomes a biologist and does field work. The jungle rivers she investigates are located in Cross River National Park, one of the twenty-five largest biodiversity hotspots on earth, but very remote with hardly any roads. However, she already knew the area a little through fellow biology students who research land animals there, such as gorillas and forest elephants. The fact that she eventually turned to freshwater fish was mainly due to a professor of hydrobiology, virtually the only woman at the biology faculty of the University of Abuja: “A very tough, hardworking woman, who gave me a lot of advice, also on a personal level. But freshwater fish are also very beautiful and interesting, precisely because they have hardly been studied.”
In the early days of her fieldwork, especially when she had to convince traditional leaders, she always had two male colleagues at her side. They now work for her own foundation, Aquatic System Conservation, through which she continues the conservation work for Cross River’s freshwater fish.
She is also currently doing a PhD at Howard University in Washington DC. She maps ecological changes via the microbiome of various freshwater fish. This is desperately needed, because the fish are not only threatened by the international aquarium trade. Pesticides used on palm oil and mango plantations along the rivers leach and enter the water bodies. She recently received the Future for Nature Award at Burger’s Zoo for her work. She wants to use the prize money, 50,000 euros, to help farmers find alternative sources of income, so that they can compensate for the possible lower yield of their products if they stop using pesticides.
The endemic fish for which she is currently campaigning the loudest is the Scheeli killifish (Fundulopanchax scheeli), a small and colorful fish that is also popular with aquarium keepers and is now threatened with extinction. Killifish are so shy that they often dart away when Atofarati plows through jungle streams on her Crocs and comes close. Fortunately, thanks to environmental DNA, she can use the ‘memory’ of water to investigate them. But just as the water remembers the fish through the small traces they leave behind, the fish remember the water: if it is polluted, that pollution also ends up in the fish. Atofarati: “It’s all connected. That’s why I’m creating a database with genetic information about the fish themselves, but also about the ecosystem through which they move.”
She hopes that future freshwater biologists will build on this and substantiate their protection proposals with data. Atofarati: “In the end, we can only protect what we know.”
