IBAC – The Journey
‘Pirates Den’ is a group that focussed on the conservation of Indian biotopes and wetlands from its nascent stage. Unfortunately general people are not that much conscious about the mysterious world under water. General people often lack the concept that fish keeping is not just about keeping a fish, but about knowing their environment and recreating that in a glass box; it is also about knowing the value of the aquatic world. And this unawareness gradually leads them to ignore the ecological importance of wetlands in general. That is why ‘Pirates Den’ focussed on highlighting the native wetlands and rivers, native fishes and aquatic plants from its beginning. Even comic strips were made and published in ‘Pirates Den’s official bengali e-magazine “Mechho Boi” about the importance of native wetlands and fishes.
Now, to increase this consciousness about Indian biotopes and their ecological value ‘Pirates Den’ has decided to take a big leap forward by organising a biotope competition, IBAC (Indian Biotope Aquarium Contest) 2023 which will create an awareness among people about the value of our own aquatic biotopes.
Diversity of Indian Biotope
India is a megadiverse country with 10 biogeographic zone. Each of these zone can be subdivided in several micro systems. Also India has snow fed rivers and monsoon fed rivers, then there are tributaries of this rivers. This massive country has more than 700000 wetlands which include the swamps of the hills, the lake and jheels among the plains, the mangroves and the estuary. Every bit of water has life in it. The broad spectrum of fish species that resides in this wetland has great variation due to the geographic and geological diversity of the waterbodies. The lake in Ladakh varies from the lake in Sikkim, the lake in Deltaic Madhya Pradesh is different from the back water lagoons of Kerala. The Daoki Lake in Meghalaya is different from the Dhuandhar in Madhya Pradesh. State like West Bengal which has more than 10% of the wetlands of the country has diverse names as per their type ; Khal, beel, haor, baor, badabon, ponds etc. The streams of the hills of the north varies completely from the streams of the ghats and deltas of the south. India hence has a huge biotope variety naturally occurring at every corner of the country.
About IBAC
IBAC 2023 or Indian Biotope Aquarium Contest 2023 is a unique aquarium competition which intends to highlight the richness of Indian Biotopes. Though there exist various types biotopes in this vast Indian subcontinent, the attempt has been little to focus on them in the aquarium hobby. As a result terms like ‘Dahl lake biotope’ is not as popular as ‘Lake Malawi biotope’, or Godawari river habitat is not as common as Rio Negro habitat. This lack of awareness about our own subcontinental biotope inspired Pirates’ Den to invent a competition which is dedicated only to Indian Subcontinental biotope.
