PANGKALPINANG - Endemic fish are the hallmark of an area. However, it is not uncommon for environmental ecosystems to change and people's lack of understanding in maintaining them can threaten the extinction of endemic fish.
This is what The Tanggokers are aware of, which is a community engaged in the preservation and education of endemic fish in Bangka Belitung.
The community that was founded in 2019 is aggressively educating the public about endemic fish. The seriousness in maintaining the endemic fish of Bangka Belitung continues by making their community a foundation in 2021.
Seeing what The Tanggokers have done, PT Timah Tbk supports this community to participate in conserving endemic fish by donating aid in 2021 for the development of sustainability and education of endemic fish.
Founder of the Bangka Belitung Endemic Fish Foundation, The Tanggokers Suwarlanda, said that the Tanggokers used assistance from PT Timah Tbk to build a holding pool of 10 pond units, with a size of 3 x 1 meter. This pond is used to accommodate local endemic fish breeders that have been recorded.
This broodstock is prepared for development into seeds or fry which are used for development and research.
According to him, there are about 87 species of fish that have been recorded. There are seven endemic fish species on Bangka Island and the rest are native fish.
The man who is familiarly called Landa said that they really felt the impact of the assistance provided by PT Timah Tbk. In addition, their goal of building the place has also been realized, to continue to breed these endemic fish.
“With this assistance, we can accommodate the fish that we have data on and can also accommodate seeds for future development. And there as well research materials for students and national researchers. Everything is there if researchers need specimens for research, so there is no need to go far directly to nature, just come to our Secretariat. This can save time and automatically be more focused," he said.
According to him, this assistance from PT Timah Tbk has enormous benefits for their community. From the results of the shelter in the pond, they have released more than 10,000 fish seeds such as native and endemic fish to nature. As for the types of fish such as Rasbora, Catfish, and types of the Gourami family such as Betok and also Selincah fish.
He said that they had experienced many things in conserving endemic fish, but this did not dampen their enthusiasm for preserving endemic fish.
“At first, when we recorded our fish, we were expelled by the community. We were also expelled by residents of one village while educating us about catching good fish because they did not accept it," he said.
"There are even people who catch fish in the dry season using poison and stun fish. This of course makes even the smallest fish species die due to this method of catching," he said.
For them, the most difficult challenge in preserving endemic fish is educating the public so that they can understand the importance of the biodiversity of freshwater biota native to the region.
The benefits of their efforts have been felt by the community because the community can harvest more freshwater fish in the summer of 2022.
With the more intensive activities carried out by Landa with his community, Landa is increasingly convinced that the goals for data collection, education, conservation, and maintaining the ecology of freshwater fish in the Bangka Belitung Islands will be realized.
"Alhamdulillah, there are several specimens whose data has been entered in the brain specimen for scientific-scale journals, it is possible that we can find new species. And for one type of new record, there are one species, we submitted last month at the international stopus in collaboration with national researchers and international," said Landa.
He also hopes that in the future these freshwater fish conservation activities will be carried out more massively with stakeholders or agencies to maintain freshwater fish habitat. The reason is to maintain the existence of freshwater fish habitats.
"Hopefully more will be more concerned and we also hope that PT Timah can be more active in carrying out conservation activities for this endemic fish. Because the conservation that we are doing is unique and this is the only thing we are doing because the majority of them are more for the conservation of land animals," he said.
"Basically, freshwater biodiversity is the basic food chain, so we really hope that PT Timah can support this conservation activity even more intensely. And also be a facilitator for educational activities to the community to participate in preserving endemic fish," he said.
