It was two days later when Alan saw the jaú again. This time it was evening, and he was in his field research laboratory reviewing the recordings.

The research lab was really two large rooms in a single-level brick house, isolated on a hectare of wilderness a few kilometers from the Satobra River. Alan had convinced his college to purchase the cheap residence twenty years ago and designate it a “Biological Field Station.” The name added some prestige to the college catalogue, but wasn’t much to look at. And it was rarely used.

Alan found the jaú easily on the recordings and froze the image on the monitor. It was clearly Paulicea lutkeni. Its horizontally flattened head took up almost one third of its length. The small, dark eyes were overwhelmed by thin, long barbels and by the very wide, slightly-opened mouth exhibiting small teeth, which he knew would number in the hundreds had they been fully visible. The smooth skin was uniformly black with the exception of a yellowish underbelly.

The girth of the lower abdomen surprised Alan. This was a very pot-bellied fish, even for a member of the catfish family. It looked very much like a gravid female. But it is still August, Alan thought, months before the rainy season when jaú normally spawn. Then the water, overflowing into the neighboring forests, is rich in food and cover. Yet, here in the dry season, is an apparently gravid female.

Another fact intrigued Alan. This jaú was moving downstream at a quite rapid rate. Sure, he knew that jaú can move fast if necessary. They have a powerful tail and minimize drag in the water. But they are nocturnal; they move little during the day.

The train of thought that had been bothering Alan continued to nag him. Did a bio-designed jaú get into the Pantanal? The aquaculture centers were notorious for developing fish that could spawn year-round and feed night and day. Eighteen years ago, when some “Super Pacu” got into the Amazon, these relatives of the piranha overwhelmed the ecological balance of this great system. But the controls in the Pantanal, as elsewhere, were now very rigorous. The Policial Florestal checkpoints examined every vehicle in the Pantanal, and unauthorized live fish and eggs just didn’t get through. Worldwide, the aquaculture research centers had become virtual Fort Knoxes as concerned any genetically-altered live specimens escaping, and all such mass-produced fish were necessarily sterile. The centers had to be careful: one mistake and they were closed down. The earth’s fragile ecosystem depended on such checks.

 

 

Three days later Alan saw the other jaú. He was reviewing the recordings at high speed when the specimens caught his eye. Two normal jaú, but very large. And another big jaú with a distended abdomen, apparently gravid. Each was sighted in the Satobra during the daytime hours, and all were moving fast. And the gravid one was moving in an unexpected direction if what was happening was a spawning migration. Like the first jaú, it was moving downstream, not up.

Alan was stumped. But he knew who to ask. Even though this person would be dismissed as a source of knowledge by Alan’s colleagues, what with his having a fifth-grade education and all.