When Leandro Castello graduated with his degree in oceanography in 1998, he didn’t immediately get a job related to the ocean. Instead, he found himself in the Middle Solimões region of the Amazon, studying fisheries for arapaima (Arapaima gigas), freshwater behemoths that come the surface to breathe air. These fisheries had been banned in many places due to overfishing. “I met incredibly knowledgeable fishermen,” Castello, now a fish conservation biologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the U.S., told Mongabay. “We tested the idea of whether this fisherman could count the numbers of fish, just like people do with whales in the ocean, and whether those counts of those fish could be used to foster management.” Castello said these counts were “incredibly accurate” and “200 times cheaper and faster” than assessing local fish stocks using an equivalent scientific method. In 2004, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA, even issued a regulation that gave fishers special authorization to harvest arapaima if they presented their count data, and several NGOs and government organizations also began promoting and implementing these methods, Castello said. Currently, more than 400 fishing communities in Amazonas harvest arapaima based on fishers’ counts, which allows fishers to sustainably manage these fisheries, he said. “That experience taught me there’s a lot [one can do with] local knowledge,” Castello said. Currently, more than 400 fishing communities in Amazonas harvest arapaima based on fishers’ counts, which allows fishers to sustainably manage these fisheries. Image by Brian Gratwicke via Flickr (CC BY-NC…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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