Re: Underwater filming of freshwater fish Was: "Amazonia" on PBS

["gkadar" <gkadar@idirect.ca>]

> It looked like it was designed to eat hippos & Nile crocodiles!! If I knew
something like
>that was in the water, I'd never go in!
That's why so many Africans don't know how to swim.

I read a book  by a Peace Corps volunteer working in what was then Zaire.
His task was to teach the villagers how to dig a pond that would hold water
and raise their own Tilapia for food.  The Belgian-owned cotton growing
company would expect the villagers to grow cotton and this would be weighed
at harvest time.  The villagers paid, the tax man would be sitting at the
next table to make sure he got what was his and the poor people would end up
with next to nothing.  Meanwhile, growing cotton is labour intensive and the
people would have no time to grow their own produce in other fields.  This
would result in a lack of food during the dry season and high mortality
rates due to malnutrition.  So he convinced the farmers to order more cotton
seeds than they would require and dump the extra seeds into the ponds
creating algae blooms and infusoria for the tilapia fry.  He also got them
to grow their crops in between the cotton plants.

But, back to the subject of crocs, bad fish etc.....none of the people would
venture close to the river for fear of being eaten.  So nobody knew how to
swim.  And they wouldn't even go to the river to fish.  Hence the need for
growing protein in a 'controlled' environment.


> vinny, who has been in the amazon, i'm
>> sure can tell you more about this little terror...
Vinny, tell us it's not true.....:):):)


Gabriella




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