Dr. Alan Butler lifted his sunglasses, used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and stared at the monitor. The dorado was still doing nothing. It had found a calm pocket near the river bank and there it stayed. It’d been four hours since Alan had slipped the sleek, meter-long fish into the crystalline waters of the Satobra River, complete with the optical nerve sensors that were sending back the images being viewed. Alan was seeing what the dorado was seeing, which, quite frankly, was very little. Some debris washing by, here and there a piranha or fingerling of this or that species, and still the dorado exerted itself only enough to stay in its calm pocket.
“Salminus maxilosus, you’re a boring fish,” Alan muttered, more nostalgic than agitated.
To him, the dorado represented an exciting past that was now long gone. It had been one of the all-time great sport fishing species, back when fishing had been allowed in this area of western Brazil. Colorful, with yellowish-orange fins bordered by red, and striated black lines painted horizontally on its rich golden sides, the dorado was a spectacle for any fisherman to behold. And once hooked, did they ever jump! The dorado was one of the reasons Alan used to come down from the Northern states to fish these very banks. He’d never found a fish as exciting to catch as a dorado. But as a research specimen, it was proving more than a bit dull.
Alan shifted his sitting position to get out of the hot sun and under the shadow of a tree. He was slight-framed, but wiry and well-tanned from his work as a naturalist. His short-cropped hair was graying, and the two day’s growth of whiskers on his face revealed a lot of white. As he sat on the river bank, methodically flicking an ant off his faded jeans, Alan regretted, yet one more time, that he lacked the high-tech equipment of the well-funded researchers. Sensors integrated into the optic nerves were fine when he was a post-grad three decades ago; they were an embarrassingly far distance from today’s cutting-edge technology. As far as research was concerned, Alan was a dinosaur, an object of pity to his colleagues.
But the research had its advantages: Alan relished being out here alone in nature. This region of Brazil was still beautiful, if not pristine. It was the Pantanal, the world’s largest remaining wetland: two hundred thousand square kilometers of rivers, lagoons, swamps, and oft-flooded forests and grasslands. And it was an area that had been vigorously protected over the years, since the twilight of the 20th century. Protected well before the ecodisasters that wreaked havoc on other systems. Here there were still hundreds of species of birds, myriads of colorful butterflies, millions of caimans. The Pantanal remained a home to the jaguar, anaconda, and river otter.
The way Alan figured it, sitting tranquilly on this river bank was the next best thing to fishing—but, of course, such had been outlawed in these parts for almost fifteen years. As far back as the previous century, Brazil had proscribed hunting in the Pantanal and the move to stop commercial fishing started soon afterward. It was only a matter of time until sport fishing also was severely regulated, then banned. The Pantanal had only anticipated a worldwide trend: the devastatingly effective advances in fishing technology, the environmental degradation by growing ranks of fishermen, and the boom in the ecotourism industry—all had converged to curtail commercial fishing worldwide and sport fishing in most places. The world’s fish for consumption were now produced in efficient, high-tech aquaculture centers; the leisure angling largely limited to pay-fishing waters: crowded mud holes, unless you could afford to join one of the country clubs. The surprisingly successful political campaigns by activists in the mid-21st century, backed by big money from who knows where, was now a university-course-worthy lesson in how to frame the conflict between a fragile environment and an increasingly overpopulated world.
Alan watched as a troop of Capuchin monkeys quietly moved through the treetops further upstream, betrayed only by the rustling of branches. Yes, this was a great place for reflection, he mused. But nowadays Alan’s thoughts weren’t so pleasant; they were tinged with melancholy. Revisiting the area he’d fished as a younger, hopeful researcher made him only too painfully aware that his had been largely a wasted life. He had nothing to show for his fifty-nine years. His research manuscripts? Just minutiae in the larger picture, archaic words that no one would ever access. His doctorate in biology? A relatively meaningless degree in an era when it seemed everyone in the developed world was getting a Ph.D. in something. His job? Just a soon-to-be-retired, assistant professor at a second-rate community college.
But it was his ex-wife and his only child who had served as the measure of his life. The only woman whom he’d ever loved had followed her dreams in the arms of another while he’d been engrossed in his world of research. His daughter’s departure had caught him equally by surprise—dead of a drug overdose at the age of sixteen. First time, her friends said. Twenty years had not erased the pain. Alan hadn’t even a grandchild to show for his almost six decades of life. And so he sat here alone in the Pantanal, looking for that great biological insight, but with second-rate equipment and a second-rate plan. Striving for that career-maker that he knew was out of his reach. Hoping for something that would signify his life had some impact on the unfolding tree of time, not just the end of a dying branch.
At least it’s pleasant here in August. Alan liked this time of the year, the Pantanal’s dry season, Brazil’s winter season. Although still tropical, the temperatures at night sometimes dipped into the chilly sweater-and-windbreaker level, and there were fewer mosquitos. And that latter point was a relief in what was essentially a heavily-vegetated swamp with rivers flowing through it.
Even with mosquitoes, the Pantanal was still a great respite from civilization and its endless problems. The recent worldwide optimism—ushered in with the movement for international unity, particularly the United States coalescing with the League of Latin American Nations—had since given way to the usual pessimism. Technology and national unity has solved some problems. But the anticipated new era of common prosperity, peace, and happiness had culminated in the same fundamental crises: corruption, weapons of mass destruction, family breakdown, abuse, pollution, crime. The unity of the drug cartels into one Syndicate disturbingly paralleled that of international unity. Yes, it’s good being here in the Pantanal.
Alan glanced at the monitor. The dorado was still inactive. This is a lot of money to be spending, Alan thought, but at least….
Alan’s eyes riveted to the screen. What the hell was that? Something large and black was moving slowly across the screen. In a moment it had passed beyond the dorado’s visual field. “That was a jaú!” Alan said aloud and with marked incredulousness, accenting the ú like the “ow!” of a child pricked with a needle. “A big jaú!” At least it looked very big, he thought. What was it, 120 cm? Maybe 150?
But a jaú? Paulicea lutkeni? In the Satobra River? Never before had he heard of any of these monster catfish being seen here. The Satobra was just too clear, too shallow. This particular section of rapidly-flowing water was a dorado’s dream habitat, not a place for a jaú. The Miranda River, which the Satobra empties into just eight kilometers downstream, was a different story altogether. Plenty of jaú in that large, muddy river. These monster catfish keep to turbid environments, where their barbells’ chemoreceptors, smelling and tasting chemicals at minuscule concentrations, provide them an advantage over species more dependent on sight. They like deep waters and great rivers. But a jaú here?
Alan was stumped. Is this a bioengineered fish? For a while there had been bioengineered fish showing up in the oddest places. Coldwater fish were spotted in warm water environments, and warm water species in cold. There were Pacific salmon netted off the coast of Madagascar and saltwater species reported moving down the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Bioengineering seemed a great idea when one designed fish and aquatic insects to survive in the acid streams of Pennsylvania or the low-pH lakes of Canada. But when they started infecting normal ecosystems, they were a virtual plague.
The history of introduced species had always been checkered. Introduce an African honey bee to Brazil or a sea lamprey to the Great Lakes and the economic and environmental impact was staggering. But humanity had never seen anything like what transpired when superiorly genetically and technologically bioengineered organisms escaped from research laboratories and aquaculture centers.
Alan took a deep breath and looked at the sunlight reflecting off the crystalline Satobra waters. No, he decided, I have too much imagination; this couldn’t be a bioengineered fish. The tension lifted as he reviewed the stringent controls in place. Bioengineering firms needed to meet so many regulations nowadays that most of them would be better off locating in Antarctica to fulfill the requirements—or in space. And the policing was thorough. This jaú, he finally concluded, is just the outer edge of the normal distribution curve. It wandered into the Satobra. It will wander out. Just an interesting observation to be added to the final report.
Alan packed up his equipment an hour before sunset. It was always the last hour of sunlight when the mosquitos along the river came out in mass. Alan left the dorado in the water. He could have collected it easily by pushing a switch and activating the nerve block implants, then transferring the fish to an aerated tank in the enclosed bed of his truck. But it was safe here, and other implants would progressively shock its system if it started to leave the delineated research area. If there was any problem, there was always the tiny satellite tracking device. The fish was well acclimated now; the recording could continue all night.
Alan stayed in the vehicle until dark and then departed. No one would venture up or down the jungle river at night, and he would be back at the break of dawn.