January 10, 2022

16:01

Ricardo Oliveira – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – In the Purus region there are no cattle and little red meat is eaten. But there are big fish. That’s where the biggest of them all resides: the pirarucu (Arapaima gigas), also called the “king of the rivers” by the riverside dwellers. It is necessary to make a long trip along the bends of the Purus to its lakes. To reach the home of the big fish, you have to pierce through the forest. The giant sees himself playing leapfrog and shows his colorful tail in eye-catching red and, when he sees us, he shyly takes refuge in the grass.

During the fishing management period, from August to November, the Association of Managers of the Piagaçu-Purus Reserve (Amepp) makes the trips to the fishing areas, and the various lakes and paranás are explored by the “sectorist” managers – each one has its own communities and its organization for large-scale fishing.

Going up the river, the order of the sectors is at the entrance Cauacuianã, Itapuru, Ayapuá Cabeceira, Arumã, Paraná do Macaco, and Supiá Redenção is the last. The wooden boat Promessa de Deus, shaped like a cigar, is the home of the Amepp board of directors for ten days. It glides through several paranás and lakes, until it meets up with the other managers there. On the way, as a “backdrop”, the fauna with grebes, biguatingas, caimans, monkeys, and many others.

The region is home to the Piagaçu-Purus Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), a Conservation Unit (UC) of the State of Amazonas, located between the Purus-Madeira and Purus-Juruá rivers, inserted in a mosaic of protected areas of approximately 2 million hectares and created in 2003, by Decree 23.723.

There are vast areas of dry land forest containing Brazil nut plantations and a variety of floodable environments of different origins. The rich floodplains of the Solimões and Purus rivers encompass several lakes, which occupy 44% of the reserve. The region has high biological diversity, high productivity, and great economic importance from its natural resources.

Financial support

Currently, Amepp has 300 people associated with the association. “Here, we try to strengthen ourselves as a category”, says Antônio Souza, vice-president. According to him, young people from the communities look for work in the association. “The management work starts in January and lasts until the end of each year. We teach the young apprentice with the practice and knowledge of the more experienced ones, who guide how to count the fish”, he says.

Souza says that, both in the forest and in the lakes, it is common, at times, for accidents to happen with snakes, alligators, or even the electric fish poraquê. “The pirarucu hides in the capinzal and we advise them to wear boots and never to act alone. Nobody can enter the forest alone,” he adds.

One of Amepp’s demands is to get monthly financial help for the managers. “When management starts in January, it’s because we already have to locate the lakes and count the catch for the big catch, which starts in mid-August. The fisherman goes into the field at the very beginning of the year and leaves his family at home during this time. The management avoided the shortage not only of pirarucu, but of tambaqui, turtles, and tracajás,” explains Souza.

Surveillance

It is at the floating surveillance base that the Promessa de Deus boat docks when it enters the paraná at the entrance of the Cauacuianã sector – a fishing area with more than 200 lakes, which includes the Cauã and Cuianã communities. The watchman Leandro Silva, 24, welcomes us: “I stay here on watch, because our work is focused on containing the invasions inside our sector”.

Leandro reports the partnership work to avoid invasions and conflicts. “Here, invasion attacks happen, and we are here to prevent and also to orient. We can never be alone; since it is a surveillance job, we work seven days a week, over the course of 35 days from one surveillance to the next, and, with my partner, we help each other.

He tells that he had a dream: he wanted to be a naval engineer. “It is a dream that sometimes we put in our hearts and, for lack of financial conditions, we don’t make this dream come true, but we live happily and, with health, we conquer our objectives little by little.

Terror in Paranás

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The fisherman Francisco Freitas da Silva, 40, says that, in these years of management, when “the fish dry up”, tambaquis, pirarucus and tracajás stay in the lake. According to him, it is easy for the offender, a situation that increases every year. “We here call them invaders, because they took the meshadeiras from our people, they even use faction names. We are family fathers, we have no weapons, and we asked for help, because they came with guns and we had to give them up.

Francisco tells that there were 12 “invaders” against nine of his people. “And they said they had 14 more in another corner. That’s aside from the ones that were in other lakes. They went into our protected area and nobody knows how many turtles they took, and they went on a spree there. So, our hands are tied at this moment. The sector is asking for more security. Soon, we will have authorization and we won’t have any fish to catch. These invaders scare us. There are no police. There are no armed forces. We are alone”, he lamented.

“Liberation”

The Paraná do macaco is a complex of 28 lakes within the management area, and it is the residents of the community of São Sebastião and São Pedro who, in the early hours of the morning, are engaged – men and women – in wading through the forest until the great Parí lake.

Much more present than in previous years, the women have the mission of clearing the ground to put up the tarpaulins and prepare the fire for the support camp and to prepare lunch. The men divide themselves up for the big catch, with fishing nets and canoes at the ready. “The pirarucu is a very smart fish. It knows that it is going to be caught and burrows into the capinzal so as not to be caught”, adds Abel Aquino.

For the fisherman Francisco da Silva, the management of the pirarucu is a liberation for the riverside people. “Before, fishing was illegal, and there was a scarcity. The management prevents our children from going to the city”.

These young managers are the ones who, at the end of the day, have the mission of carrying the large fish already captured on their backs to the float, where it will be cleaned and frozen for transportation to the city of Manacapuru and, from there, to Manaus. The RDS Piagaçu-Purus can be considered an example of collectivity for subsistence.