Bonytail Chub (Marsh Education by Safari Ltd.)

Today’s review concludes our series of reviews on the Marsh Education fish figures, commissioned by the Marsh & Associates Native Fish Lab and produced by Safari Ltd. I didn’t necessarily save the best for last, but I did accidentally save perhaps the most endangered for last. The bonytail chub (Gila elegans) is native to the Colorado River Basin in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. It once occurred in New Mexico, Wyoming, and Mexico but is now extirpated in those places. It is listed as critically endangered, and it is believed that there are no self-sustaining breeding populations left in the wild. All bonytails in the wild are hatchery bred and stocked fish, the descendants of 50 wild caught individuals. The construction of the Hoover Dam is a major contributor to the decline of the bonytail, and competition with and predation by non-native fish don’t help either.

The bonytail chub reaches a length of 2.03’ (62 cm) which puts the 6” (15.24 cm) Safari figure at about 1/4 in scale. The bonytail lives in flowing pools and backwaters over rocky or muddy bottoms. Young fish feed mostly on plants while adults consume plants, invertebrates, and small fish. Bonytails can live up to 50 years.

The Safari bonytail is presented in a static pose with a slight leftward bend of the tail. It can be positioned resting on it’s pelvic and anal fins or tilted forward to rest on its pectoral and pelvic fins. It is nicely detailed with cross hatched scales over the body and finely detailed fin rays. The mouth anatomy and operculum are also well executed.

The figure faithfully reproduces the distinct and somewhat odd anatomy of the bonytail. The head is slightly concave and arches into a pre-dorsal hump. The caudal peduncle is exceptionally thin and gives the species its name. In the early 1900’s they were also referred to as broomtails because of this feature. The figure also has 10 sculpted dorsal fin rays, which is correct for the species. The bonytail does have visually similar close relatives, including the humpback chub. About 20 species belong to the Gila genus, together known as the western chubs, many of them are endangered.

The figure is painted dark gray along the back and it nicely fades to a paler gray along the flanks. The underside and fins, including the base of the caudal fin and tip of the dorsal, are painted pale pink. This indicates that the figure is meant to depict a breeding male. The eyes are yellow with black pupils and little spots of white eyeshine.

And that’s a wrap on our look at this unique set of endangered fishes of the American southwest. Hopefully in reviewing these fishes I’ve helped draw attention not only to these one-of-a-kind collectibles but to the plight of the very unique species that they all represent. Looking at the set as a whole, with each figure being so distinct from the other, it saddens me to think that we could, and very likely will, lose any one of them. The situation appears quite dire, but we have brought similarly imperiled species back from the brink of extinction before and as long as these fish are still alive, in a hatchery or in the wild, there is hope.

But people are going to have to want to save them, and fishes are not as high profile or charismatic as the elephant or polar bear. Thankfully, organizations like Marsh & Associates, as well as Safari Ltd., are doing their part to raise public awareness for these obscure endangered species. So, if you don’t have this set yet, I implore you to go to the Marsh Education website and purchase it. The money goes towards a great cause and you in turn can use these toy fishes to teach the next generation that the real ones are worth saving.