Biologist pursues rare fish

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Dec 28, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Roaming through cave sinkholes in Madagascar, Prosanta Chakrabarty was one of the few ichthyologists who didn’t get seriously ill on a field trip searching for new and rare fish in June.

“But he vomited after he got out of the sinkhole,” said Bob C. Schelly, a staff member of the Department of Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Schelly, who worked with Chakrabarty at the American Museum before Chakrabarty became the new curator of fishes at LSU’s Natural Science Museum, guessed that his ex-colleague’s reaction to the sinkhole might have prevented him from getting seriously ill like two other scientists on the trip.

“That’s Prosanta. He is extremely unflappable. He is excellent in the field because he’s always composed and difficult to rile up,” Schelly said.

Chakrabarty, 30, said his June visit to Madagascar was a “tough trip” because of the illness two of his colleagues suffered, but it was exciting because the group collected a new species of blind fish.

“We call it sinkhole fever. There was so much bacteria in the water from birds and bats and other dead things. You can also get cut from the limestone in the caves. But that’s what you have to do for these collections,” Chakrabarty said.

Chakrabarty, who is also a newly appointed LSU associate professor of biological sciences, is hoping that his travels around the world to search for the newest fish will broaden the university museum’s fish collection.

“There are schools here (in the state) that have plenty of Louisiana fish in collections, but I want this museum’s collection to be special and unique in the region,” Chakrabarty said.

Of course, the glamorous side of Chakrabarty’s field work involves such challenges as wandering through caves in Madagascar and visiting other exotic locales such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic.

The flip side is digging in piles of junk and discarded fish caught by fishermen in Taiwan.

Chakrabarty said more than 80 percent of what is caught each day goes to waste because it’s not the target species. All the by-catch is dumped into a pile in the back of seafood markets and eventually ground into fish, chicken or livestock meal.

Chakrabarty said he is able to find rare fish in the junk piles.

Chakrabarty, who has been on nine international expeditions so far, said he has found new specimens on each trip.