With stocks rising, residents here have resumed fishing for bass, limiting the season to just three days a year but using nets to increase their catch. Even so, the most recent census, taken last November, counted 476 pirarucu in the lake.
Thanks to the new system, fishermen here are not only earning more money, they are doing so with much less effort, "which gives us more time to grow crops and tend cattle," Almeida said. Some fish processing plants serving finicky urban customers also see advantages.
"With this kind of planned management, you not only can be assured of a stock of raw materials, but can specify how the fish has to be cut and what kind of hygiene the market demands," said Jose Vicente Silva Ribeiro, manager of a large plant in Santarem, a city of 200,000 just down river from here.
But the large commercial operations are threatening that success. The recent growth of the fish population has attracted trawlers from as far away as Belem and Macapa, at the mouth of the Amazon, nearly 1,350km from here, and Manaus, about the same distance upstream.
To protect their stocks, many communities have organized nightly fishermen's patrols. But the amount of money at stake is so high by local standards that poachers are willing to risk being caught and losing their equipment. There have been confrontations, some involving arms.
Local councils have also restricted the ways in which fishermen can fish, which the law allows. New rules include shortened fishing seasons, limits on sales outside the community, minimum sizes and prohibitions on certain kinds of nets.
"You can't control access, only what people can do," explained David McGrath, a professor at the Federal University of Para who is involved with the program. "But if I'm a commercial fisherman, I'm not interested in going into some lake to use a hook and line."
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