The Smithsonian Institution Natural Museum of Natural History (SI-NMNH) Washington D.C., USA conducted their 3rd fish expedition from different fish markets in the country in relation to the on-going project on DNA Barcoding of all commercial fish species in the Philippines in partnership with the NFRDI-Genetic Fingerprinting Laboratory last May to June 2013. The Philippine fish collection team composed of Dr. Jeffrey T. Williams, Dr. Kent E. Carpenter and two research assistants Apollo Marco D. Lizano and Aaron John Macaspac tried their luck to look for different variety of fishes from the Visayan region starting from Cebu, Tacloban, Eastern Samar and IloIlo. A total of 350 newly collected fish species has been added to the list for just a month of surveying the public markets. Yet again, American scientists were riveted from different fish species that they have been consistently collected every time they visited a different location. Dr. Williams said that “It has been our third year and we expected that the rate of collecting new fish species that wasn’t listed on our database will decline, but fortunately due to the rich biodiversity in the Philippines, we were surprised that we found plenty of new species that haven’t been collected from the past two years of doing our expedition. Also, we have collected a few interesting fish species that I haven’t seen in my entire life”. Moreover, Dr. Mudjekeewis D. Santos head of NFRDI-GFL finds a stretch to help and be part of this expedition even just for a few days. In general, the expedition has been again very successful and according to Dr. Williams they will surely return for another trip next year this time targeting the different fish markets from the island of Palawan.
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