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.
PHOTOS: NY TIMES
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.
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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