To gather more information about a special fish, Ben Moran,who had been a student of Northeastern University and also Knight-Hennessy scholar, travelled to the coastal region of Central America on May, 2017. In Belize, he went out to find a special type of fish called Maya hamlet and collect its DNA in the process. But soon he found out that the fishes were not where they were supposed to be. He claims that this research in Belize changed his life and the way he thought before.
A research was conducted by Moran and his fellow researchers for 9 days to search for the obscure, iridescent, electric blue fish. Instead they found out a lot of dying coral reef. Moran, who wishes to focus his career on marine conservation and animal genomics, gave up the hope of finding the wish at all.
His luck looked up and soon someone informed his team and him that an iridescent blue fish was spotted in an area where NGOs were working on restoring coral reefs. There, the team found a lot of Maya fish after their long anticipation.
The team wrote a research paper on the basis of the DNA sample that they had collected and found out everything about it from its population, history and health. While studying about their population, Moran noticed that it was significantly low. To take precautions, he had decided to plan a petition to declare the fish “endangered” under International Union for Conservation of Nature.
According to Greg St. Martin, he claimed that, “When we got there, we realized that the work was not going according to plan and that we kind of had a responsibility to try to make this situation better, I’m looking forward to keeping more of that mindset as I go through my research career”.
Currently, he is working as an assistant teacher in Three Seas Program in Panama and plans to conduct his third global co-op soon.
Subarna Basu