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Les Kaufman: The Fishery Rescue Physician
| Article
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10338 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1993 |
3,206 Words |
| Author
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Vince Magers
Vince Magers is a science writer based in Greenwood,
Missouri. He wishes to thank the following for their
assistance: Alan Haney, dean of the College of Natural
Resources at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point;
Sheila Larrabee, naturalist with the Missouri Department of
Natural Resources (DNR) at Knob Noster State Park; Mike
Currier, natural resource steward, and Terry Callahan,
assistant natural resource steward, both of Missouri's DNR. |
Les Kaufman is standing in a room full of tanks in which fish of every color and stripe dart about. The fish are survivors, crowded onto a modern-day ark of sorts in the wake of one of the world's worst ecological catastrophes. They are part of what remains of Lake Victoria's fish population, once counted among the world's largest and most diverse. Forty-seven species have been brought here to Boston's New England Aquarium, where Kaufman is chief scientist, and to about 30 other captive breeding centers around the world in hopes of staving off their extinction. Kaufman leads a team of scientists, known as the Lake Victoria Research Team, who have taken on the formidable task of undoing decades of human damage and saving what remains of the fauna of the greatest lake on the African continent.
"We've got a lot to learn and very little time to learn it," Kaufman says. His sense of urgency isn't unfounded, since 30-50 million Africans rely on fish from the lake for food. Algal blooms, set off by nutrient-rich runoff washing into the lake, and deforestation have left large stretches of water without enough oxygen to support fish. The Nile perch (Lates niloticus), a predatory fish first introduced to the lake in 1954, has eaten its way to the top of the food chain, wiping out species after species along the way.
For these reasons, as many as 200 native fish, possibly half the species in the lake, have already vanished, meaning they are probably extinct, since most existed only in this lake. Nearly that many more are in peril of facing the same fate, Kaufman says. "We speculate that the cutting of the rain forest in the Amazon is causing a mass extinction of insects and plants, but the Lake Victoria situation just happens to be the first instance where a mass extinction is occurring and can actually be watched," he explains.
From his earliest days as a working scientist, Kaufman has juggled an array of seemingly disparate interests. His doctoral thesis at Johns Hopkins University revealed how damselfish kill Caribbean coral reefs and then nurture algae on the coral to attract shrimp and other prey. He studied the impacts of power plants on fish, clams, crabs, and other bottom-dwelling aquatic creatures in Chesapeake Bay. He has championed the notion that zoos and aquariums should be more than places where visitors can glimpse into the wild and has pressed his colleagues to take a more active role in protecting animals in the wild and their habitat. Kaufman has also taken up the cause of the bluefin tuna, an ocean-going species dangerously depleted by overfishing to supply Japan with sashimi and sushi.
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