Catching Flies: The Damned

Never block the flow of water or words
- Untraceable proverb of Chinese origin

I have been looking at fish-related literature from India and it has been both instructive and shocking. I came across the brilliant draftmanship of an unknown artist in the employment of Patrick Russell at Vizag. Indian artists drew fish also for Christoph Samuel John, T.C. Jerdon, Walter Elliott, W.H. Sykes, Thomas Hardwicke, and perhaps many others. Some of these were examined by Francis Hamilton and Francis Day. Day had begun as a typical physician naturalist, and in 1855 he had exhibited some of the bird skins that he had collected. From a position as an army physician, he wrote on the state of Cochin, describing also the fishes of the region, and his expertise led to him being moved into the position of inspector general of fisheries.

The genus Wallago after a Telugu name recorded at Vizag by Patrick Russell

Sphyraena jello - from Telugu jellow recorded by Russell

Patrick Russell in his 1803 publication noted the local names of fishes. In his earlier work on snakes he was able to provide coloured plates (and even an MS plate with an actual snake skin stuck on) and it was after his work that the snake genus Bungarus was established, derived from Telugu Bangarum for gold, referring to the colour of the banded krait. It was a revelation that the fish genus Wallago and the barracuda species Sphyraena jello were also derived from local names. His drawings were made for him by an unnamed Indian artist. The drawings were copied and engraved into plates in England and printed.

Reading through Francis Day's work is particularly interesting, and he notes the role of Sir Arthur Cotton, these days only remembered for his "pioneering" work in damming the rivers of Andhra and Telangana. Surprisingly, and unlike our supposedly more enlightened modern engineers who are now all set on causing further mindless ecological carnage through river-linking projects, Arthur Cotton surmised that his dam projects were damaging fisheries and he had Day sent to examine the issue.

In 1867 Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India, in a despatch to the Madras Government, directed their attention to a letter from Sir Arthur Cotton, in which he said he "should suppose that the injury to the coast fisheries must be very great, now that seven of the principal rivers on the East coast" are barred by irrigation works that had been constructed. In consequence of this I was directed by the Government to visit the "anicuts" or weirs in the Madras Presidency, in order that the Heads of Departments might have fuller information on the subject than had been offered them up to that date. This order was carried out as follows : — first the districts to the south of Madras were inspected, and then those to the north. I was afterwards instructed to continue these inquiries, and went to Orissa and Lower Bengal, afterwards to British Burma, and at the end of 1869 to the Andaman Islands. An accident which occurred during these investigations compelled me to proceed to Europe in March, 1870, but this enabled me to visit many of the fish-ladders in use in England, and I returned at the end of the year to India.

My visits to the irrigation works on the rivers of Southern India in 1867, had, however, completely established the fact that the fish which, prior to the erection of the weirs, had ascended the rivers during the season of the rains for the purpose of spawning, were not only prevented from proceeding up stream to spots suitable for the deposition of their ova, but were collected in such vast numbers immediately below these weirs, which they vainly attempted to pass, that the wholesale manner in which they were caught by the native fishermen almost amounted to extermination of the spawning fish of each season.
Day, Preface. Fishes of India. Volume 1.

In his work on The Fish and Fisheries of Bengal, Day further adds that "it might be erroneously concluded that no such destructive causes can affect the non-migratory fish" and goes on to explain how much fish biology is affected by dams and weirs. Day talks about fish that went up from the sea up the Cauvery until Trichy in large numbers in the past. It seems needless to point out that the constructions rather than the fishermen were the real problem. It is likely that some fish species went extinct before they were even described.

Day worked under the department of agriculture Department of Revenue, Agriculture, and Commerce and in his Fishes of India, thanks his superiors Richard Strachey and A.O. Hume. Hume was doubtless a great supporter of Day's work and Day had himself been a bird collector, exhibiting skins at the Madras Exhibition of 1855 for which he received an honorable mention (the judges included Hugh Cleghorn and Hume's cousin E.G. Balfour). Day supported Hume's bird collecting expedition in the Sindh through the fisheries department and personally took part in collecting as well.

Day also thanks Sir Walter Elliott: "formerly of the Madras Civil Service, who most liberally placed at my disposal the whole of his beautiful and accurate coloured illustrations of the Fishes of Madras and Waltair which he had had executed by native artists from the fresh specimen." Some of these plates are in the Zoological Society of London, with Telugu names written on the margins. A careful study of these plates by a fish specialist will surely yield interesting information.

Meanwhile with typical nationalist pride and careless idiocy the Indian government is all set to go forth with its river linking plans. Who cares about a few thousand fisherfolk, leave alone a few species of fish?!

An unidentified fish included by Francis Day in the Fishes of India

A note on the decline in fishes in the Ganges from The Modern Review, September 1937 (The Tragedy of Bengal's Fisheries by Dines Chandra Majumdar pp. 280-285. ). Another case of the shifting baseline in species declines:

Just thirty years ago the late Sir K. G. Gupta under orders of the Government submitted a report on. Bengal's fisheries. The report, as well as his enquiry, was necessitated by the growing scarcity of fish in those days even.

Further reading