ILLEGAL TAMBAQUI FISHING IN THE NEGRO, SOLIMÕES AND AMAZONAS RIVERS: AN ANALYSIS ON THE EFFECTS OF CLOSED SEASON LAW

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Cidiane Melo
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Marshall, Bruce Gavin, Freitas, Carlos Edwar de Carvalho, Nascimento, Carlos Augusto Rodrigues do, Sousa, Raniere Garcez Costa
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biota Amazônia
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unifap.br/index.php/biota/article/view/4714
• topic: Colossoma macropomum; tambaqui; fishery stocks; closed fishing season compensation.

Due to the decline in fish stocks in Brazil, mainly in the Amazon Basin, the Closed Fishing Season Law was implemented to help fisheries recover and protect fish habitat. Tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) is one of the main overexploited fish species and there is concern about its decline in many Amazonian rivers. Therefore, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the Closed Fishing Season Law as it applies to tambaqui, seizure data compiled by IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environmental Protection) was analyzed for the period 1993 to 2012 (20 years) for the Negro, Solimões and Amazonas rivers.  Although the results of this study showed variations in the volume of tambaqui seizures among the three different rivers analyzed over a 20-year period, these variations were small in comparison to the differences found between the 10-year periods before and after implementation of the Closed Fishing Season Law. Overall, there was a 24.4% decrease in the volume of tambaqui seized after implementation of the Law, which can be attributed to a number of possible reasons: 1) reduction of tambaqui stocks in the area of study; 2) occurrence of great floods and dry periods influenced by the natural phenomena El Niño and La Niña, which strongly affected fish stocks in 2002-2003 and 2009, respectively; 3) poor enforcement of regulations, due to reductions in IBAMA personnel and; 4) difficult to patrol such a large area, including many remote locations. However, notwithstanding the noted overall decrease, the results suggest that implementation of the Closed Fishing Season Law with its corresponding compensation payments to fishers did not end up dramatically improving the protection of tambaqui stocks and may have even encouraged more people to enter into the fishery to benefit from the payments. Keywords: Fishery stocks; fisheries; closed season compensation.