NANFA-- Bluenose shiner news

Irate Mormon (archimed_at_netdoor.com)
Mon, 8 Sep 2003 23:03:31 -0500

I had a rather disturbing conversation with one of my friends at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science yesterday. It seems that
somebody has been plundering welaka for the "Pet Trade". Mike suspects that a "German aquarist" is responsible, but asked me to
see if I could find out anything. According to him, sites that have been productive for the last 15 years are now void of welaka. I am
wondering if any of my southern brethren have heard of such a person? Not that I think that a foreign aquarist is necessarily involved,
but this is very upsetting in any case. As Chris knows, I have been kicking around the idea of writing an article on how the range of
this fish has changed over the years. Due to intense time pressure I haven't really made any headway on this, but the little
information I have gathered is alarming. Some of you may gather from my "point-counterpoint" dialog with Gene Helfman (I think it's
in this issue of A/C, unless Chris decided it was too controversial) that I am gung-ho about collecting "special concern" species
which do not enjoy legal protection. This is not the case at all, as I hope I communicated in my rebuttal. P. welaka is one of those
fish which is not protected in MS, but is listed as "special concern". I am almost to the point of asking NANFA to declare an official
moratorium on collecting this fish, but I need to get my facts in order first. If there is a reckless individual out there, and anybody
has any idea who it might be, PLEASE help me in identifying him.

Prost,

Martin

--
The people in the village were real poor, so none of the children had any toys. But 
this one little boy had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks, and he 
would go around and whap the other children across the face with it. Man, I think 
my heart almost broke. Later the boy came up and offered to give me the toy. This 
was too much! I reached out my hand, but then he ran away. I chased him down 
and took the enema bag. He cried a little, but that's the way of these people.
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