Gregory Paul Yan discusses the impact of invasive fish on our ecosystem and explores strategies for prevention.
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00:00This is a unique story about the fish here in Amazing Earth.
00:06Janitor fish is an armored suckermouth catfish from South and Central America.
00:13They are popular in the aquarium trade.
00:15The problem is that janitor fish is a very adaptable fish.
00:20Before the pandemic, one of the stress relievers that Filipinos love is fish farming.
00:34Aside from goldfish, small janitor fish are also popular among aquarists.
00:40Because they eat garbage, they are the cleaners of the fish tank.
00:45Maybe that's why they are called janitor.
00:48However, when the janitor fish grow up, they are no longer cute to look at inside the aquarium.
00:57So what some of the aquarists do,
01:00they put them in the waterways, directly to the rivers and lakes.
01:05And that's where the big problem starts.
01:09Janitor fish is an armored suckermouth catfish from South and Central America.
01:15They are popular in the aquarium trade.
01:18The problem is that janitor fish is a very adaptable fish.
01:23This ability has allowed them to proliferate and spread from just a few river systems
01:29to many, many places throughout the Philippines.
01:33Greg is the founder and executive director of Best Alternatives,
01:37an NGO that promotes sustainable methods for biodiversity conservation.
01:43There are three ways in which invasive fish can enter the Philippines
01:50when they are multiplied as food fish.
01:53The second is in the aquarium trade.
01:56Finally, we also introduce invasive fish as biological control measures.
02:04Just recently, in Marikina River,
02:06there were many reports of catching Pangasius or Cream Dory.
02:12Wow, each one is not less than 10 kilos in weight.
02:17This is from Indochina.
02:20Cream Dory is brought here to be multiplied as a food fish.
02:25In Lake Lanao in Mindanao, we have another example.
02:29We lost a very scary tilapia there.
02:34And because tilapia can be predatory,
02:38they ate the endemic fish of Lake Lanao.
02:43Tilapia has a large market in the Philippines.
02:46This is just the second in terms of production.
02:51What we need is to manage tilapia better
02:57so that they are not lost in our water
03:01or sometimes lost because of a storm or flood.
03:05Biodiversity can crash when we introduce something that is not really natural in the area.
03:14People are the ones who bring invasive species to rivers and lakes.
03:19We should also find a way
03:22to control and stop their predation.
03:52For more UN videos visit www.un.org