As the howler monkeys roared near this outpost in the far reaches of the Amazon rain forest, Valdenor da Silva grasped his harpoon and guided his canoe through the dazzling floodplain mosaic of lakes and channels in a quest for his prey.
The river giants are plentiful this year, said Mr. da Silva, 44, a father of eight who puts food on his family’s table by hunting down the pirarucu, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish. Flashing a smile, the fisherman, standing 5 feet 7 and weighing 160 pounds, added, Every pirarucu I’ve harpooned this season is bigger than I am.
In piranha-infested waters, fishermen go in search of the pirarucu, which can grow as long as seven feet and weigh more than 400 pounds, placing them in the ranks of freshwater megafish like the Giant Pangasius (often called the dog-eating catfish) and the Mekong giant catfish, both found in the distant Mekong River basin.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Monster Fish Surgery in the Wilds of GuyanaJAN. 23, 2013
Dinosaurs of the Rewa RiverJAN. 22, 2013
Into the Rhythms Where Arapaima RollFEB. 28, 2013
With overfishing and habitat degradation threatening such Goliaths in different parts of the world, riverbank dwellers and biologists in the Amazon are working together to save the pirarucu (pronounced pee-rah-roo-KOO) by prohibiting outsiders from catching the fish and overhauling their own methods of pursuing it.
Their effort to save the fish is yielding a pioneering conservation success story in the Amazon while offering a strategy for fending off a broader freshwater extinction crisis, according to fisheries experts who track the depletion of big fish in the world’s rivers and lakes.
Just a short while ago, we feared that wild pirarucu could disappear from the Amazon, said Ruiter Braga, a fishing technician for Mamirauá, a rain forest reserve that helped develop the management regime, during which the stocks of pirarucu in the area have climbed more than 400 percent. But we figured out that the only way to save the pirarucu was to involve the people living in the forest who depend on the fish for their own survival.
Authorities began by issuing a general ban on pirarucu fishing in 1996 in Amazonas the giant Brazilian state in the Amazon River basin that is three times the size of California but granting local peoples exclusive fishing rights to waters in their territory.
Some riverbank villages also prohibited the use of curtainlike gill nets, which are used to vertically ensnare the pirarucu, called arapaima in English. And crucial to boosting the size of the pirarucu, communities also commanded the release of pirarucu smaller than 1.5 meters, or about 4 feet 11 inches, allowing potential spawners to grow; pirarucu generally reach maturity at 3 to 4 years.
While cast nets are still permitted in some places, pirarucu fishing otherwise returned to its roots, a tradition involving little more than harpoons, wooden clubs, canoes and a great deal of patience.
During the dry season, when water levels fall in the Amazon’s wetlands, fishermen fan out in their canoes looking for pirarucu, which rise to the surface to breathe air every 15 minutes or so, a result of a labyrinthine organ that enables the fish to survive in oxygen-poor waterways.
Continue reading the main story
Once the pirarucu is spotted, the frenzied pursuit resembles seal hunting almost as much as it does fishing. Interrupting the eerie calm of the forest, fishermen impale the pirarucu with their spearlike projectiles. When lashing about, the pirarucu are often strong enough to capsize the fishermen’s small canoes, casting them into waters teeming with caimans and piranhas.
Their effort to save the fish is yielding a pioneering conservation success story in the Amazon while offering a strategy for fending off a broader freshwater extinction crisis, according to fisheries experts who track the depletion of big fish in the world’s rivers and lakes.
Just a short while ago, we feared that wild pirarucu could disappear from the Amazon, said Ruiter Braga, a fishing technician for Mamirauá, a rain forest reserve that helped develop the management regime, during which the stocks of pirarucu in the area have climbed more than 400 percent. But we figured out that the only way to save the pirarucu was to involve the people living in the forest who depend on the fish for their own survival.
Authorities began by issuing a general ban on pirarucu fishing in 1996 in Amazonas the giant Brazilian state in the Amazon River basin that is three times the size of California but granting local peoples exclusive fishing rights to waters in their territory.
Some riverbank villages also prohibited the use of curtainlike gill nets, which are used to vertically ensnare the pirarucu, called arapaima in English. And crucial to boosting the size of the pirarucu, communities also commanded the release of pirarucu smaller than 1.5 meters, or about 4 feet 11 inches, allowing potential spawners to grow; pirarucu generally reach maturity at 3 to 4 years.
While cast nets are still permitted in some places, pirarucu fishing otherwise returned to its roots, a tradition involving little more than harpoons, wooden clubs, canoes and a great deal of patience.
During the dry season, when water levels fall in the Amazon’s wetlands, fishermen fan out in their canoes looking for pirarucu, which rise to the surface to breathe air every 15 minutes or so, a result of a labyrinthine organ that enables the fish to survive in oxygen-poor waterways.
Continue reading the main story
Once the pirarucu is spotted, the frenzied pursuit resembles seal hunting almost as much as it does fishing. Interrupting the eerie calm of the forest, fishermen impale the pirarucu with their spearlike projectiles. When lashing about, the pirarucu are often strong enough to capsize the fishermen’s small canoes, casting them into waters teeming with caimans and piranhas.
2014 The New York Times Company