A short personal account of the second meeting of the PP in Hamburg/Germany  

Peter Finke

Our second meeting is over. At first, it did not look good: Some friends who wanted to come from far away (America! Asia! France!) were prevented by hurricanes, suddenly cancelled flights or job reasons. But in the end all said unanimously: It was a good, a very good international meeting; it will have taken us further.

Seeing the Paros in our tanks and breeding them we easily forget the reality in the homelands of our fish. Our project strives at seeing this differently; this is the most important of its aims. So, in the beginning we saw and listened to two outstanding, concrete video-presentations of our Chinese friend Wentian Shi (Guangzhou) on the actual situation of many species from Bangka, Belitung and Kalimantan Tengah, among them new forms that have not been found and described hitherto. These were reports about today’s reality. They were disillusioning, but hopeful too, characterized by captivating precision and expertise. A central result was the rediscovery of P. deissneri that last year was thought to have been extinct already. Now we will be able breed them again.

Then Christian Koppitz (Halle/Saale) explained to us how we could use Paros as “flagship-species” for indicating the ecological value of the Asian peat swamps, an idea that we want to realize with the help of the Sea-Life-Trust. A beautiful and courageous small exposition, realized and shaped without help by Helene Schoubye (Denmark) in the “Blue Planet” in Copenhagen, tried this already; it was presented to us by her. This taken together with our contacts to Sea Life and the Chester zoo we now have new possibilities of institutional cooperation which could supplement and relieve our limited capacities as enthusiastic amateurs. Part of this is our half-yearly census. Raffael Eggli (Switzerland) presented to us a detailed and accurate analysis of seven years that now will serve to learn from it.

And this was not enough. Additional to the point and extensive discussions became very concrete: We have debated on new perspectives of how to secure still unspoiled habitats in Indonesia, to make people in America and Europe aware of themselves being involved in the palm-oil tragedy, and to devise the next steps of action. Wentian and his Chinese and Japanese friends were honoured by the PP-award for special achievements for 2016/2017, and he himself was incorporated as member into our steering group. In the end many participants accompagnied Bernd Bussler to visit his breeding station and acquired offspring of some Paro-species elsewhere hardly to be found.

My personal resummee is that it was a great, a splendid meeting, perfectly organized and accompagnied by Bernd. Thank you! The hotel (the same as two years ago) was a bit difficult to reach, being situated lonely on a wooden hill, but with plenty of space, very friendly personals, a good service and restaurant. Helen and I were fully satisfied. The meeting was much more than a mere social event, it was an English spoken working meeting with definite and specific results. In two years time we shall meet again, but then for the first time in a different country, probably in the UK. We are quite confident this will come about. My conclusion is: Everybody who came from Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, China and Germany to Hamburg witnessed an important step of the PP.

Peter Finke (Bielefeld, Germany)