It was one of those days that the peasant fishermen on this tributary of the Amazon River dream about. With water levels falling rapidly at the peak of the dry season, a giant school of pacu, a tasty game fish that fetches a good price at markets, was swimming right into the nets being cast from a dozen small canoes here.
"With a bit of luck, you can make US$350 on a day like this," Lauro Souza Almeida, a leader of the local fishermen's cooperative, exulted as he moved into position. "That is a fortune for people like us," he said, the equivalent of four months at the minimum wage earned by those fortunate enough to find work.
But hovering nearby was a large commercial fishing vessel, a "mother boat" equipped with large ice chests for storage and hauling more than a dozen smaller craft. The crew onboard was just waiting for the remainder of the fish to move into the river's main channel, where they intended to scoop up as many as they could with their efficient gill nets.
A symbol of abundance to the rest of the world, the Amazon is experiencing a crisis of overfishing. As stocks of the most popular species diminish to worrisome levels, tensions are growing between subsistence fishermen and their commercial rivals, who are eager to enrich their bottom line and sate the growing appetite for fish of city-dwellers in Brazil and abroad.
In response, peasant communities up and down the Amazon, here in Brazil and in neighboring countries like Peru, are forming cooperatives to control fish catches and restock their rivers and lakes. But that effort, increasingly successful, has only encouraged the commercial fishing operations, as well as some of the peasants' less disciplined neighbors, to step up their depredations.
"The industrial fishing boats, the big 20 tonnes to 30 tonnes vessels, they have a different mentality than us artisanal fishermen, who have learned to take the protection of the environment into account," said Miguel Costa Teixeira, president of the local fishermen's union. "They want to sweep everything up with their dragnets and then move on, benefiting from our work and sacrifice and leaving us with nothing."
Local authorities are sympathetic to the fishermen's plight but say there is little they can do. Brazil's constitution and supporting legislation have established an open channel policy, which makes it illegal to close a river or lake to public navigation or even to charge access fees.
The biggest source of conflict is the mighty pirarucu, a type of striped peacock bass that is the largest freshwater fish in the world. Notable also because it "breathes" with specially evolved lungs and an air bladder and can survive a nasty dry season by lying in river mud until the flow of water returns, the pirarucu can reach lengths of up to 2.5m and weigh over 90kg.
"The pirarucu is the boss of all fish in the Amazon, definitely the king," said Antonio Pinto, president of a regional council of 11 cooperatives that practice managed fishing. "Everyone wants to catch them, not only because they are so big, but also because the price for them is so good once they get to market. That's why we need to be so careful."
Here, for example, an initial fish census in 2000 found only 26 bass in the local lake, which the commercial operators and poachers from neighboring villages can reach by sending skiffs through channels that connect with the river. Alarmed residents agreed on a fishing accord that imposed a moratorium on catches. A year later, that number had grown to 96, and a year after that to 146.
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