Report from the 3. International Meeting, Chester, UK

THE 3 INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF THE
PAROSPHROMENUS PROJECT

6-8 of august 2019 in Chester, UK – located at Chester Zoo and held with the support of the Aquarium Team, Chester Zoo.

The first 2 International Meetings has been held in Hamburg Germany, but it was decided that this time we would try to move to another place, in another country.
As we are in the beginning of establishing connections with The Aquarium Department in Chester Zoo, and also frequently have people contacting us from the UK, we felt it would make sense to try to make the meeting happen in the UK.

We were a little nervously waiting to see how many would then actually meet us in UK, and the event has been published on facebook, in our facebookgroup many times, – and it was also on the homepage. We felt we had reasons to come, and to strengthen our relations with the team in Chester, but of course we very much hoped that there would be members in the UK, who would see it as a chance to meet together and get to know each other as well.

The meeting took place on August 7, 2019, and we were kindly supported by Chester Zoo, who offered to host the meeting by providing room as well as all serving lunch, tea and coffee.
For at rather small project as the Parosphromenus Project this kind of support is very valuable, as it is very difficult to organise such an event from abroad, and with very little financial capacity, – so a big thank you has to to be expressed to Chester Zoo, and in particular Andrea Swatman, the leader of the Aquarium team who did a great job organising these things for us.

The group which met for the meeting, was a small but dedicated group, – the presence of people attending from UK was not so big as we might have wished for, – but it was very nice to meet people who we had met before, and new people coming all the way from Switzerland.

From left front Martin Zuber (Switzerland), Allan Brown, (UK) Helene Schoubye (DK) Marlyse Zuber (SW), Andrea Swatman (UK), Klaus Härtel (SW),Kevin Marshall (UK), Michael Balzer from Shoal (UK). Back from left Benjamin Wilden (GE), David Armitage (UK), and Jack Irish, Harry Shields and John Smith from UK.

The day was quite full, first with a presentation by Benjamin Wilden, who explained about the Parosphromenus project.

Andrea Swatman, team leader of the Aquarium Department, spoke about the conservation work of the Zoo, presenting a project which they have been involved with previously, relating to how could it be possible to become involved with the PP, not in a similar way, but perhaps with inspirations from other projects.

Chester Zoo is very positive towards engaging with the PP in some form of cooperation, – this could be in field work, if and when something opens up as an opportunity. It is difficult to precisely say in what way, – many factors needs to meet together for this to take shape, – but it remains very clear that we are being met with very positive attitude from Chester Zoo, – and is being offered support in terms of personel and financial support of some sort – when eventually reaching the point where it is possible to determine how a project could be undertaken in the field.

Another engagement which is more likely to move ahead more quickly is the making of ’husbandry guideline’ for EAZA – (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria)
The intention is first of all to make a more general, not species dependent, guideline to the keeping of paros in capture, but in the long run this will be suplemented by a much more detailed spread sheet in which observations for all species can be collected, and in the future hopefully many details of any species can be found here.
It is work which is important and needs to be done, – but we are very much aware that it is not something which will happen overnight, – this will take time and will only happen in cooperation with both breeders, keepers and locals.

Very early on in our planning, we got into contact with Allan Brown, – who is one of the real pioneers in the field of parosphromenus as well as bettas, – and he generously offered to do a presentation for us of his earlier trips to Sarawak and Penninsular Malaysia.
Allan Brown took us in his presentation, through his and his wife Barbaras travels in Sarawak and Penninsular Malaysia.
It was incredible fasinating to see how he and his wife travelled and collected on their trips, – and experience the complete dedication of going to far away places, remote areas, staying in hotels with bags of fish all over, and bringing at the time unknown and rare, new fish back to UK.
We saw photos of the at the time unknown Parosphromenus species which he found, and which is now known as P. allani, – and photos of biotopes which was beautiful and untouched, yet also how – years ago the destruction of some habitats was clearly also happening.
It was a priviledge to meet Allan in person, and listen to his presentation.

Wentian Shi, – joined us for an online presentation, – a tecnical performance which we had not tried before, – but worked incredible well, – and can be used another time too.
Wentian also led us through some of his recent travels, in particular in the area on Borneo, in which you find the species of filamentosus. As always, Wentian, is doing some incredibly interesting observations and findings, – and we hope to be able to shorten this presentation a little and make it available on our youtube channel – as soon as possible.

The day was finished by a joint dinner at a local pub, and on sunday most of us met again to join Andrea in a very interesting tour behind – and also a little at front – in the Aquarium Department. We saw the parosphromenus tanks which has already been established for some time, and it inspired to many discussions about water, ph, how to do many things, – the food, of course there were many interesting ‘live food’ variaties to be found behind the scenes, and this is of course something which will engage a paro-interested group of poeple.

We wish to thank everyone who has taken part in this meeting, – by supporting our work, by being interested and engaged, sharing their enthusiasm. I will finish by showing a few photos from the city of Chester, which for me personally made the stay a very good experience.