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Biologist Immortalised 
as ‘Smart’ Fish
DUBAI - A UAE-based researcher is on her way to being immortalised in biology textbooks after a new species of fish was named after her.
- PUBLISHED: Fri 29 May 2009, 12:46 AM UPDATED: Mon 6 Apr 2015, 1:48 AM
Arabian freshwater fish Garra Smarti was named after the British-born Ph.D. student, Emma Smart, who discovered it while diving in Southern Oman.
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Smart has been studying Arabian freshwater fish, while working for a joint Emirates Wildlife Society-WWF initiative in Dubai over the last eight years.
“To find a new species of invertebrate is not that common these days, so I’m very proud,” she said.
“Although the fish was not that different from other freshwater fish, it was the location which was unusual. This particular species must have been separated in this region for hundreds of thousands of years.”
She took measurements on the properties of the water in which the fish lived, as well as several live samples. Then back in the lab, with the help of another German biologist, she compiled as much information as possible into a report on the new species.
Her report was verified and published in the marine biology journal AQUA, last month — seven years after she first discovered the species.
Smart is also studying another species of freshwater fish found in the Wadi Wuraya protected area in Fujairah. She said that she hoped to pioneer research in the relatively unstudied field of Arabian freshwater fish. “These fish live on the edge of survival. Oftentimes the temperature of the water is too hot, there is not enough oxygen and food supplies are low,” she said. “It is important to collect as much information about their habitat as possible in case they ever become endangered.”