Suriya and Kasat: Full Team Revisited Ep.II

The story begin

April, it supposed to be the dry season, the hottest and driest month of the year in Thailand. Yet, I was looking out of the office’s window seeing Bangkok skyline being blurred by heavy rain. With 6 days to go before our big expedition into one of the most difficult off-road terrain in Thailand, rain –as much as I love water- was not a welcomed guest.

After my brief visit –only one and a half hour- to Suriya river in early February and discovered 2 new records species –Botia kubotai, Parambassis pulchinella- and a new family –Phylorynchidae- for Thailand, I felt that the Suriya needed a more thorough investigation. So after 2 months, I planned another trip. This time the whole siamensis.org team was going to join in the quest, further more, another team of orchid craze people from Thailand Wilderness Study group was going to join with us on this expedition. It was fool prove, this was going to be fun…but it was raining. And the road will be just too dangerous, or even impossible to travel.

2 days later, I called our host in Kanchanaburi Prov., who said that it was still raining and that there were some fatally accident in the jungle. Our hope of going was slim. Then, came a forecast saying that the rain should stop within 2 days which –if true- will give sometimes for the road to be baked by the hot tropic sun before our schedule. Although our Weather Forecast Dept. has not been very accurate, this time they were right and our trip was going to happen.

Thursday, April 6, 2006: 8 PM., we found 6 of us cramped up into my little pick-up truck, heading to Sang Kla Buri District the land that lies along the Thai-Myanmar border. From there we would enter TungYai-Hua Kakhaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, a UNESCO’s World Heritage site, by a rented well equipped off-road truck. We would travel on the dirt road up north passed through one of the most virgin forest on the planet and at the end of the trip, Kasa and Suriya river were waiting. These 2 rivers were two of the most difficult rivers to access in Thailand, and have been very little studied.

April 7, 2006: The Orchid team joined us at the morning market where we filled up our coolers with foods and water, enough to feed 16 people for 4 days. By 9 AM., the wheels rolled and I found myself looking out the wind shield at the familiar sight, dense jungle on the low land, drier and bamboo populated highland and cool clear streams. In this first part of the trip we had to cross the Loki river –part of Mae Klong Besin- for 14 times, then the terrain would get very hilly and dangerous. On my last visit, my car almost failed from a road that was build by digging out a dirt cliff. This time at the exact same spot, our driver told us that a car failed into the cliff last week, nobody was seriously injured as the car hit a large tree and stop after a few meters down the hill. Then after about 100 meters, there was another spot where accident occurred, a Karen kid was dead here. These happened last week, when it was raining and the road turned very slippery with mud.

By 4 pm. we have been traveled for 7 hours and managed to cover about 70 Km. The first sight of Kasa river was a welcome relieve. As our local driver could drive much faster than the 3 others cars from Orchid team, we stopped in the middle of the river where the water was about 50 cm. deep to wait for them. This part of Kasa river was about 30 meters wide and on our left was a small water fall.

“Giant Red-tailed loach!” Ton –youngest Siamensis.org member- shouted, looking out the windows into the river. “Uh! Where?” Chaiwut –our in-house Ichthyologist- asked him. “There there!” Ton pointed into the river where I saw 2 fish of about 12 cm. long foraging at the bottom of the graveled river. They were big loaches if they were loaches. “No, they are not loach, they are Garra!” Chaiwut said and I almost jumped into the water to take a closer look at them. This fish, we later dubbed “Garra sp. Redtail”, was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful Garra species in the world and it is most probably formerly unknown to science. This was the first of many more excitements this trip going to bring to us.

Suriya and Kasat: Full Team Revisited Ep.I

Story By: Nonn Panitvong
Images By: h.m.rm

Abstract

Suriya River (known in Myanmar as Hanthayaw) and Kasa River (Known in Myanmar as Ataran) originated in Thailand in the area of TungYai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary which is a UNESCO’s World Heritage site. The sanctuary located in the west of Thailand along the border with Myanmar. It is a part of the largest forest in mainland South East Asia. The Western Forest Complex–as it is known in Thailand- is the last home of many rare and endangered species such as the Asian Wild Buffalo(Bubalus bubalis).

The 2 rivers flowed from Thailand up north then cross the border into Myanmar, where it later joined with the Salween river just before it emptied into the Andaman sea. As a result, the fish fauna in these 2 rivers comprised mainly of the fish of Salween river besin. Others groups of fish are those found in Tenasserim river besin of Southern Myanmar and Thailand. It is also very interesting –although not unexpected given their proximity- to note that these 2 rivers also share some fish species from the Mae Klong river besin of western Thailand. However, there are some species of fishes that –so far- can only be found in Suriya and Kasa rivers such as Botia kubotai, Parambassis pulcinella, and Akysis vespa.

Although the part of these 2 rivers in Myanmar has –to a certain extend- been investigated and studied, the head water part in Thailand which located in deep forest remained un-studied until Nonn Panitvong and Chaiwut Krudpan visited the Kasa river in 2003 and 2004. The Suriya river was later visited by Nonn Panitvong in February 2006 and once again by Siamensis.org team in April 2006.

Of the 4 trips mentioned, we recorded 7 orders, 16 families and 51 species of fishes, of which one family and 6 species are new records for Thailand and most likely 9 species formerly un-known to science. Given that there are many species of fishes currently known only from these 2 rivers, we believe that further thorough investigation should yield more species formerly un-known to science world. (List of all the species can be found at the end of this article)

Our study has shown, once again, that Salween river besin, as a whole system, has very diverse fish fauna. So far, it is the only large river system in mainland South East Asia that has not been managed and/or regulated by human in large scale. We proposed that it should remain so until impact of our action to the home of these faunas and floras, to the livelihood of native people and economic value of the project are well studied, that all the mistakes we –Homo sapiens- have made in many water regulation projects have been put into account.

Siamensis.org team,
April 2006