MY ANALYSISCharacterization:
My goal in studying the macro-organisms in Amazon River was to find indicator species which could be used to study the water quality and any change in water quality. However, this turned out to be somewhat hard task to do. Past studies on aquatic biota were usually aimed at understanding the species themselves rather than determining the water quality. This is because there are more direct methods to determine the quality of water (i.e. Optical Backscatter (OBS), Acoustic, Spectral reflectance etc.) than to use indicator species. In addition, I was able to learn that Amazon River is too big and diverse that it is almost impossible to find an indicator species. In order to study the quality of Amazon River, it is necessary to study the entire community of fish in the Amazon River. This was impossible to incorporate into our Mission 2006 Project Plan since it would have cost too much and would have required a lot of man power.
However, even though my initial goal did not succeed, I still continued to research about the macro-organisms in Amazon River. Macro-organisms in Amazon River are very diverse and numerous new species are being discovered and named every year. Amazon's great diversity is due to its great size, location/position and low extinction rates. (Freshwater Riches of the Amazon. John Lundberg. Natural History September 2001)
In addition, many native Brazilians depend on the fish for their living. For example, commercial fishery is one of the principal sectors of the regional economy - empolying more than 30,000 people, generating US$ 100-200 million annually. This is because fish from Amazon are a popular export to Asian countries, especially Japan. They are also a key element in the diet of people living along the Amazon River. Because of the high protein content of their diet, inhabitants along the river are much less likely to be malnourished than rural people in regions without fisheries.
Problems:
Effect of acidification on aquatic biota is serious. For example, in northeaster North America, acid percipitation is a wide-scale problem currenlty threatening aquatic resources. Losses of fish populations are among the serious effects of acidification. However, many researchers believe that Amazon River is still relatively safe from acidification. This is because the Amazon is so vast that acidification in one part of the Amazon does not greatly affect the Amazon River as a whole. Thus, acidification is not a major problem in Amazon River.
Monitoring:
From my research, I have found two monitoring methods that could be useful in studying aquatic biota. First, the VHF telemetry is a monitoring method usually carried out both by hand and using automatic, scanning, directional receiving stations situated above the forest canopy. It uses VHF transmitters in the frequency range 173-174 MHz to study the movement of aquatic biota. Second, the robotic boat for autonomous fish tracking is a monitoring method that would use a small robotic system that will reduce the cost of gathering data on the movement of large fish and marine mammals.
Between these two monitoring methods, I believe that the robotic boat for autonomous fish tracking is much better choice. This is because the robotic boat is much more cost efficient and requires much less man power to operate.
