ROBERTO LINSKER/MAR DE HOMENSWith a coastline that extends for a little more than 3,000 kilometers, Peru annually removes around 8 million tons of marine fish, 16 times more than that officially captured in Brazil, the owner of a coastline that is three times longer. Why can’t the country manage to beat the annual harvest of 500,000 tons of fish, crustaceans and mollusks taken from salty water? Is there a lack of support for this economic activity? Is there inefficiency in the national fishing industry? Or is the Brazilian really not very efficient at casting net and hook into the ocean?
According to a recently launched final report of a mega-study sponsored by the federal government about fishing potential along the Brazilian coast, the central explanation for the apparent timidity in this sector is not due to any of the above hypotheses. In relation to the major fishing nations, such as Peru and China, located in zones of cold waters, rich in nutrients, here few fish are caught in the sea simply because there are few fish in the tropical portion of the Atlantic which bathes the national coastline. “Our waters are warm in the majority of the coastline and poor in food for fish”, says Carmen Wongtschowski, from the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo (IO/USP), who participated in the formulation of the report. “These are unfavorable conditions for the occurrence of large shoals.” Along the major part of the coastline, the average annual temperature of the surface water is above 20ºC, creating an inhospitable environment for the occurrence of large concentrations of marine life (see map on page at the side). Indeed, there is no way to double or triple the volume of marine fish captured, as some extrapolations in the past had forecasted.
This verification is nothing new for the specialists, who, contrary to those ill informed on the question, do not associate the large extensive Brazilian coastline to the abundance of living beings in its waters. The report is the synthesis of a decade of multidisciplinary studies carried out by more than 300 researchers from 60 national institutions and universities for the Survey of Living Resources in the Exclusive Economic Zone Program, namely Revizee in the Portuguese acronym, an initiative into which some R$ 32 million were invested. The merit of the Revizee program is that it provides an updated radiograph of the status of the main species of commercial importance for marine fishing in Brazil. This sector employs around 800,000 people and mobilizes almost 60,000 fishing boats in the country, half of them of artisan character, such as those that appear in the photo on the opening page of this article, copied from the recently published book entitled, Mar de homens [Sea of men] (publisher Terra Virgem, 180 pages), by the photographer Roberto Linsker. “We have valuable marine resources, but scarce ones”, says the oceanographer Agnaldo Silva Martins, from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Ufes), who was a member of the group of researchers who studied the region from the Cape of Sao Tomé, in the north of Rio de Janeiro state, to the city of Salvador. “We need to better discipline our access to them.”
Over a decade the researchers from the Revizee program carried out various studies from the north to the south of the country and participated in capture experiments, the majority of them in deep waters, hundreds of meters below the ocean’s surface, at times a long way from the coast and the continental shelf, in order to determine the eventual fishing potential of new and ancient marine species. Into the bargain, during the program, the researchers discovered six new species of fish and 55 of benthos (beings that live in the depths of the sea) along the Brazilian coast.
In force since 1994, the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is an international concept that regulates the use of oceanic resources in a band that begins where the territorial sea of a country ends – the 12 nautical miles coast limit (22 kilometers) – and extends for a further 188 nautical miles (around 350 kilometers) into the open sea. In Brazil, the EEZ covers 3.5 million Km2.
Anchovy: there is the potential of fishing up to 100,000 tons per year along the South-Southeast coast
For the majority of the species of economic value, above all those that are found close to the coast, there is no way of increasing, in a responsible manner, the quantity of examples today removed from the Atlantic in accordance with the final results of the Revizee program. They are at their maximum limit of exploitation or have already gone beyond it and the size of their populations has dwindled considerably. This is not to say that there cannot be small and punctual increments in the capture of determined fish, especially those that live in deep waters, and of the so called shrimps and crabs of the deep, as yet not explored to their full extend. “There could be gains that are more qualitative than quantitative if we were to adopt more efficient management of national fishing”, says the biologist Silvio Jablonski, from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), one of the authors of the final report.
Only one species, up until now practically not commercially explored in Brazilian waters, could represent a non dishonorable increase in the volume of fish captured in the sea: the anchovy. The others should not alter the national fishing statistics substantially, although some, in spite of their reduced stocks, have excellent commercial value. A relation of the sardine, with a size in its adult stage that varies between 4 to 17 centimeters, the Engraulis anchoita, the scientific name of the species, presents a potential capture estimate that is sustainable, without putting at risk the stocks of this resource, in the order of 100,000 tons per year, especially in the South of the country and to a lesser extend in the Southeast. The fish is usually found along the continental shelf, which can be described as a submerged plateau with an inclination angle of around 5 degrees and at the maximum 200 meters in depth. Nevertheless, there are limitations for the exploration of this resource. The anchovy, which could be used as bait for catching other fish or processed to become fishmeal, is difficult to conserve aboard ship and there is no market demand for this product.
Another resource that could also be the target of some increase in capture is the Argentine short-finned squid (Illex argentinus), a squid that, as its name suggests, preferentially occurs in the cold waters of the Patagonia region, at depths of more than 100 meters, but which can be found in the southern portion of Brazil in the winter, when the temperature of the sea off the coast of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina states becomes lower. “The Argentine ilex squid is a shared resource, which spends the greater part of the year in Argentina and seasonally migrates to here”, explains Carmen. “Its commercial exploration, which has become to be undertaken by some fishing boats, has to be very cautious because the quantity of examples of the species varies considerably from year to year in national waters.”
On of the fears of the researchers is that the exploration of the Argentine short finned squid intensifies and repeats the history of the blackfin goosefish (Lophius gastrophysus), a deep water species that began to be captured by large boats around five years ago, when the Revizee program had been in the middle of its studies, and today already appears to have its reposition stocks highly jeopardized. A classical case of a resource that was explored beyond account is that of the Brazilian sardine (Sardinella brasiliensis). At the peak of its capture along the Southeast coast, during the decade of the 1970s, the Brazilian sardinella reached the annual provision of 200,000 tons of fish. In 2001 this number had dropped to 20,000 tons and, little by little, it would appear to be returning to grow. In 2004 some 40,000 tons of sardines were captured, according to official data, but it is still too early to say if the stock of the species is being replenished.
ROSANGELA LESSAPseudupeneus maculatus: this red fish from the Northeast, the spotted goatfish, is appreciated in FranceROSANGELA LESSA
Even in the zones with highly warm marine waters there are specific niches that, if explored in a critical and careful manner, could render some dividends to national fishing. In the Northeast fish such as the guarujuba (Carangoides bartholomei), the sapuruna (Haemulon aurolineatum) and the spotted goatfish (Pseudupeneus maculatus), this last one much appreciated in France where it is called the rouget, fall into this situation. The scientists, therefore, advise that the status of fishing in the region must basically remain as artisan, without the opening up of the northern seas to ships of large size that capture diverse species each time that they go to sea. “Fishing here should continue to be artisan not because it is more backward than, for example, that practices in the South and Southeast of the country”, explains the oceanographer Rosangela Lessa, from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE). “But because the quantity of resources doesn’t correspond to industrial fishing.” There is a large diversity of species in the Northeast sea, but the presence of expressively large shoals is rare. For this reason, in order to conserve the local biodiversity, and at the same time, not pressure the small stocks of each species, the marine captures, according to oceanographer Rosangela, must remain at their current levels of exploitation.
In the North there also exist sectional opportunities to apparently invest in fish and crustaceans up until now under explored. “The commercial capture of the more traditional coastal species, such as the Southern red snapper, the sierra and the spotted seatrout, is at the maximum limit”, says the fishery engineer Flavia Lucena, from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). In the soundings made by the Revizee team, the resources that, in theory, could be the target of some increase in fishing would be the deep-sea red prawn (Aristeopsis edwardsiana) and the deep-water shrimp (Aristeus antillensis).
Both of these species, which are already the target of fishermen in the Southeast and South, occur in highly localized areas at depths of between 700 to 800 meters. Another resource that calls the attention was the presence, in large quantities, of the long-nose greeneye (Parasudis truculenta) along the coast of Amapá state at depths between 350 and 700 meters. “The problem is that, as yet, we don’t know exactly how much we can capture of these species without putting their stocks at risk”, ponders Flavia.
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