The upper Rajang river of Sarawak

[kuching]

June 4, 2008. It was a beautiful morning in Bintulu. My friends & I decided to explore Batang Belaga, a tributary of upper Rajang river of Sarawak. Rajang river is the longest river in Malaysia. I believe there are a lot of new species of aquatic flora & fauna can be found there.

In this trip, we found at least 3 species of hill stream loaches that none of us ever seen before. They are probably Homaloptera species.


One of the tributaries of Batang Belaga:






This loach looks a bit like Homaloptera orthogoniata from Peninsular Malaysia & Thailand:





Unidentified species.




Unidentified species.





To be continued.....

[keithtang]

Hi Bro Kuching,

The loach on last picture..i have it in my tank..
Bought from a LFS in Vietnam HCMC.
Not sure what loach is that.Thought it was SAE
when i buy it as the tank was dark.

[PROFILLET]

Interesting trip. How to get there?

[Jervis]

Awesome!!! Any interesting flora?

[kuching]

Thanks all. Still busy to upload my pictures....got too many field trips & photos until no time to post.

[kuching]

On the 2nd day of my journey to northern Sarawak, we drove to Bakun to check out the rivers in the upper Rajang river basin. We hope that we can find new species of fish or aquatic plant.


First location; a mountain stream. Forest is cleared by logging company. Now it's farm land & secondary forest. Fish population is VERY SMALL. Found Homaloptera sp. , Puntius banksi and a species of shrimp (Macrobrachium sp.)




Homaloptera sp.





Batang Belaga. It became a muddy river after rain because of logging activity. A lot of places in Bakun is becoming oil palm plantation. There is nothing to see in the plantation except the BORING oil palm tree. Borneo is going to be an oil palm island oneday, I guess.






Finally we found a clearwater stream to explore...





we found unidentified species of hill stream loach....

[kuching]

Another fast flowing river at Bakun. There are some oil palm trees near the riverbank.




Unidentified species of Homaloptera sp. which I never seen before!!!







Rasbora sumatrana is very common here.







Rain again.....oh no. (Raining everyday)






Before we going back, we stopped at a stream & caught 2 species of Homaloptera there:

[kuching]

On the 3rd day, we checked out the peat swamp near Bintulu:





Most of the fish there are same as those from lower part of Rajang river (Sibu area); this one below is Betta akarensis, one of the most common wild fighting fish in Sarawak:







Here also got Rasbora kottelati




This Rasbora got 3 black spots instead of 2 spots, compared to it closer relative, Rasbora kalochroma:





Before going back home, we found out that some rivers are good to explore as the water level is not high (no rainfall in that area)....but too bad, it was getting dark, so we shall be back next time.

[Jungle-mania]

Do you ever see crocs in the river?

[trident]

Michael,
This is what you quit your job for?
Wish I could quit mine and join you
Looks like fun