Fishing for Peje: The Search for Mexico’s Living Dinosaur
Fishing for Peje: The Search for Mexico’s Living Dinosaur - Nathaniel Parish Flannery - the Atlantic
A fish whose anatomy has barely changed in 100 million years is a local staple in the Mexican gulf coast. But the humble peje is also becoming a political flashpoint.
Guadalupe Jimenez stands with his knees slightly bent, dipping his paddle and pushing through the water in smooth, silent strokes. The sky is dark. Guadalupe, or “Don Lupe” as he’s known on the small island where he lives, looks out over the still, glassy water. “Here the current runs more,” he says. The water burbles as it streams past thin trees. The boat picks up speed, moving out into the center of the isolated lagoon, located down a dirt road in the lush and green ranch country 45 minutes south of the city of Villahermosa, Mexico. The area, in the Atlantic coast state of Tabasco, is famous for being home to the pejelagarto, an ancient species that still swims slowly through the region’s lakes and lagoons, making its way into fishermen’s nets and onto dinner plates throughout the state. Don Lupe hopes to catch one.
On the outskirts of Villahermosa, Lenin Arias, a mid-career biologist who studies the peje, stands next to a bubbling tank that contains a few large fish, inside a laboratory at the Juarez Autonomous University of Tabasco. Lenin and his team are working to study the genetic code of the fish, which is being over-fished since the industry, so important to the local economy and culture, is not regulated. The scientists are also developing techniques for in-tank feeding and care that could be used to help create commercial fish-farming operations to supply peje for human consumption.
“In [Tabasco] culture, peje is an ancient fish,” Lenin explains.
“It’s part of our tropical cuisine,” he adds. In the wild, the fish “is over-exploited, but it’s not regulated,” Lenin says. The peje, a 100-million-year-old species, has a long history in the region. It is a living fossil. People in the area place a tremendous level of importance on the fish and even refer to each other as “pejes.” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a two-time Mexican presidential candidate who grew up in Tabasco, is known across the country as “El Peje.”