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Researchers trawl for lost fish 'treasure'

This Barbus schlegelii, 1868, lives again after being discovered by the RCBAS team in a corner of the British Museum June 2006. (Courtesy of Ho Hsuan-ching)

• Publication Date：01/10/2008
• By  Amber Wu

Shao Kwang-tsao is a man on an ichthyological mission. As leader of the team responsible for scouring the world's museums in search of Taiwan's lost fish specimens, Shao believes his group's "treasure seeking" efforts are far more exciting than those glamorized in the hit "National Treasure" films.

According to the research fellow at the Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, tracking down Taiwan's fish specimens not only allows researchers to trace the history of the island's fish studies, but is also vital for future research. The team hunts for information about specimens located in countries as diverse as Australia, Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Shao explained that in the early days of Taiwan, many foreigners visited for the purpose of collecting plant and animal specimens before taking them back to their own countries. A famous example is Robert Swinhoe--"one of the most successful exploring naturalists that ever lived" and the first British consular representative to Taiwan in 1862. During his time on the island, he collected a plethora of specimens that helped contribute to his dearth of research. Swinhoe's "On the Mammals of the Island of Formosa" and "The Ornithology of Formosa, or Taiwan" are classic works in the early history of natural research in Taiwan.

The importance of locating Taiwan's lost fish specimens lies in that many of them are "type specimens," which are the primal examples when the species were first discovered. From 1868 to 2007, a total of 232 type specimens were taken abroad from Taiwan, 21 of which are still lost, according to research conducted by Shao's team.

Although the project has progressed well so far, the process of locating missing specimens is fraught with difficulties, Shao elaborated. "Not all museums welcome the team's requests, and some give authorization for taking photos of the specimens only after signing contracts with us," he said. "Several museums also consider our requests exclusively on the basis of our relationships with them."

Ho Hsuan-ching, a member of Shao's research team and also a doctoral student from the Institute of Marine Biology, National Taiwan Ocean University, said that successfully identifying specimens through exhaustive record searches was just part of the challenge. He recalled one experience at the University of Tokyo in Japan when the team tracked down a specimen only to discover it had been irreparably damaged. But there are also pleasant surprises, as the team discovered at the British Museum after stumbling across a more than 100-year-old specimen sitting in a corner. "Not even the museum's staff were aware of the existence of this precious Barbus schlegelii specimen," Ho said.

There has never been any law in Taiwan forbidding the removal of plant and animal specimens abroad. As a result, scholars have to visit museums scattered around the world in order to conduct research on Taiwanese fish species.

Shao commented that with such an abundant biodiversity of fish in Taiwan--totaling more than 3,000 species--it is crucial to construct a complete database of the nation's fish. The RCBAS hosts several local biodiversity websites, with its FishBase of Taiwan linked to the global FishBase server that contains practically all fish species known to science.

As well as digitized records, the museum also holds specimens from various groups including approximately 13,000 fish, 2,000 birds, and 5,000 invertebrates (cnidarians, annelids, mollusks, arthropods and echinoderms).

Write to Amber Wu at amber0207@mail.gio.gov.tw