No fish has ever gotten under my skin quite like the arapaima. Sure these air-breathing “dinosaurs of the deep” are endangered but that Wednesday afternoon at Grass Pond in remote Rewa as dozens of the giant fish rolled in the deep, my patience dissipated faster than the fading sunlight and I rebelliously thought of how good pepperpot arapaima would taste.
Eating a living fossil indeed! Apologies to the good people of Rewa and conservationists all around. My guide Rovin Alvin was amused. Hands on the shutter, on high alert, scanning the dark waters from the canoe in the centre of the lake, I waited for the Arapaima to roll, that is, come up to breathe air. I had imagined huge fish slowly rising from the deep to languidly take gulps of air allowing me to snap numerous photos of these giant creatures and show the world that I rolled with the so-called living fossils. Heck I even imagined a selfie with an arapaima.
The arapaima had other plans. These were no lumbering dinosaurs. A quick flick to the surface, sometimes a turning tail and they were gone, leaving nothing but concentric waves on the still surface of the lake. Time and again, the arapaima rolled and vanished in less than a second. Time and again the shutter button was pressed a little too late. Don’t worry, Rovin assured. There were, he said, some researchers who came with cameras that took hundreds of frames a second and after numerous attempts, they only managed to obtain a few photos of the arapaima that they could use. That reassured me only a little as I
