Biologist claims to have found eight new fish species

JAKARTA (JP): An Australian marine biologist said on Friday that he had discovered eight new fish and 15 coral species in Indonesian's eastern waters.

Gerard R. Allen said that the new species were discovered during a 16-day-expedition that ended on Wednesday to survey the remote Togean and Banggai Islands in Central Sulawesi.

The research was conducted by a 12-member multinational team of marine scientists.

The underwater survey was sponsored by Conservation International (CI), a United States-based international environmental nonprofit organization, which has branches in more than 24 tropical countries.

Gerard said that he was 99 percent sure that the new fish species were damsel fish, wrasses and blennies.

The damsel fish belong to the genus Pomacentrus SP and Amblypomacentrus SP, the wrasses were Cirrhilabrus SPP and Paracheilinus SP, and the Blennies Essenuis SP.

The underwater survey was part of CI's Marine Rapid Assessment Program (Marine RAP) that documented the new findings among about 580 fish species in the Togean Islands and 230 species in the Banggai Island.

He added that the new species might be unique to the Togean Islands.

"One rarely gets such a high degree of endemism in marine animals, especially fishes," Gerard said.

According to scientists La Tanda of the National Institute of Sciences' Oceanology Research and Development and Syafyudin Yusuf of Hasanuddin University, the coral reefs around the islands were in much better condition than ones they had surveyed in other parts of Sulawesi and nearby Seram.

The Marine RAP team also observed that destructive practices, common in other areas of Indonesia and the Indo-Pacific region, that threaten coral reefs and endanger marine animals, were applied there.

The threats included the use of dynamite and cyanide to catch live reef fish for export, coral bleaching and crown-of-thorns starfish, a predator of living corals, Gerard said.

The survey, which was conducted in 47 sites, is the third Marine RAP survey completed during the past year in the coral triangle, the region of the world with the greatest diversity of marine plants and animals. It includes Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, northern Australia and the southernmost islands of Japan. (ylt)