PlanetCatfish.com

On the programme Africa's Rift Valley on TV last night they sent an ROV to the bottom of the lake (which they said was 6 miles deep!), with some fish bait. They said it was the first time the bottom had been filmed and was normally pitch black. It showed some Bathyclarias down there, and a quick shot of a Synodontis, which looked like S. njassae. The crabs ended up taking over the bait and after a while the Bathyclarias moved on.

6 miles seem VERY deep to me. I mean isn't that about the depth of the deepest trench in the oceans (I think that's about 11 km, so about 7 miles, but just a mile off is still quite a way).

Edit: Lake Malawi is 706 meter deep according to Wikipedia.
Lake Tanganyika is 1470 meter deep according to Wikipedia, and is also noted there as the deepest of the Rift Lakes.

I need to view that program on iPlayer, I think.

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Mats

Yes, either they got it very wrong or I heard it wrong. According to the net its about 700 metres, with Lake Tanganyika being the deepest rift lake at 1400 metres.

I did not see it - but many a BBC film is sold to other, so I hope for a second chance

However, I once heard both lakes are almost free of any oxygen below 100 meters - if that is the case, how can any fish suurvive on the bottom?

Or were therse found less deep? 80 meters or so?

The.Dark.One wrote:Yes, either they got it very wrong or I heard it wrong. According to the net its about 700 metres, with Lake Tanganyika being the deepest rift lake at 1400 metres.

I will listen when I play it. But it wouldn't be the first time someone has done the wrong thing when translating metric to imperial measures (or other way around) - and I guess it's not overly critical for a film/tv program. It's when recipe books have something like "1lb/2.2kg of ..." that you start to worry about the rest of it's content.... Or when they fuel aeroplanes with the wrong conversion - there's a (supposedly true) "disaster movie" based on that particular error - it had less than half the fuel it was supposed to have, because they converted from pounds to kilos the wrong way around...

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Mats

MatsP wrote:t.... Or when they fuel aeroplanes with the wrong conversion - there's a (supposedly true) "disaster movie" based on that particular error - it had less than half the fuel it was supposed to have, because they converted from pounds to kilos the wrong way around...

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Mats

Unrelated to the conversion thing but interesting anyway, I once flew from Nairobi to Frankfurt on Lufthansa and we had to put down in Munich for fuel as they had insufficient safety margin. You can guess for yourselves how much difference in flying time there would have been if we had carried on to Frankfurt, maybe 20 minutes or so. I was amazed that they cut it that close when fuelling the plane but I guess no-one gets paid for flying excess fuel around.

Bas Pels wrote:I did not see it - but many a BBC film is sold to other, so I hope for a second chance

However, I once heard both lakes are almost free of any oxygen below 100 meters - if that is the case, how can any fish suurvive on the bottom?

Or were therse found less deep? 80 meters or so?

It was supposed to be the deepest part, but we can't be certain they were being straight with us!

Can be dowloaded here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... art_Water/

Just listened again and to be fair they did say "over 100 metres down" - me not listening properly!

For those that cannot get it on iplayer, like the people in The Netherlands, its also on the TV again on Tuesday 2nd Feb, BBC2 19:00 UK time.

The fish filmed were not that deep, 80-100m

TP wrote:For those that cannot get it on iplayer, like the people in The Netherlands, its also on the TV again on Tuesday 2nd Feb, BBC2 19:00 UK time.

ot those of us who are lazy...... Cheers TP!

Richard B wrote:

TP wrote:For those that cannot get it on iplayer, like the people in The Netherlands, its also on the TV again on Tuesday 2nd Feb, BBC2 19:00 UK time.

ot those of us who are lazy...... Cheers TP!

Or just prefer to watch using Sky+ rather than computer...

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Mats

Just watching this now (via iPlayer).

Are the "neanderfish" (no such thing on Google) really Cornish Jack (Mormyrops anguillicaudes)?
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... hp?id=2394

TP wrote:For those that cannot get it on iplayer, like the people in The Netherlands, its also on the TV again on Tuesday 2nd Feb, BBC2 19:00 UK time.

Thank you

My problem is, I got to be away tomorrow night, but still thanks for the effort. I'll they the on-line version

edit - only accesable for UK IP addresses

Carp37 wrote:Just watching this now (via iPlayer).

Are the "neanderfish" (no such thing on Google) really Cornish Jack (Mormyrops anguillicaudes)?
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... hp?id=2394

Yes, I think so, albeit it is M. anguilloides

thanks Steve- my typing and reading weren't in synch!

here we go!

it says tanganyika is 6 miles deep, 400 miles long & malawi is similar.

showed a large syno being eaten by a croc

The bit with the remote sub & bait with the syno & bathyclarias was just over 100 metres

Richard B wrote:it says tanganyika is 6 miles deep, 400 miles long & malawi is similar.

So I wasn't hearing things!

The.Dark.One wrote:

Richard B wrote:it says tanganyika is 6 miles deep, 400 miles long & malawi is similar.

So I wasn't hearing things!

Certainly not, but i think their depth gauge might be faulty!

I thought that the photography was top-notch, but I was seriously underwhelmed with the script for the narrative.

The.Dark.One wrote:

Richard B wrote:it says tanganyika is 6 miles deep, 400 miles long & malawi is similar.

So I wasn't hearing things!

Not unless they used some clever mind-altering methods on the program itself making us all hear the same thing - I'm pretty sure that there was some mistake in the research there... And I'm still pretty sure that 6 miles is a deep water that only is found in a few places in the whole plant - all of it oceans (in fact, I think all of it would be in the south pacific).

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Mats

it won't let me watch it.