When he was a teenager at the end of the 1980s, Evanildo Sena would come back from a day of fishing dragging 5 or 6 tons of fish with his canoe at a time — a task for which he needed the help of one or two buddies. But things have changed radically since those days on the Arraial do Cabo coast in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the fisherman says. “Back then, I would catch 300 or 400 kilos (660 or 880 pounds) of swordfish every time I went out. Now they have practically disappeared from our region,” he says. In the old days, swordfish were caught one at a time with a hook. Today, Sena fishes anything that shows up during the season — anchovy, squid, horse-eye jack, blue runner or chub mackerel — some of these in smaller numbers than before. But most of Sena’s income today comes from collecting mussels along the coast during the legal harvesting season, which runs from January to August. Sena also says the number of large commercial fishing vessels has increased since the year 2000. They are allowed to fish up to the limits of the Arraial do Cabo Marine Extractive Reserve, 4.8 kilometers (3 miles) from the coast. Within the reserve, only traditional fishing is allowed. The timing coincides with a history of shrinking fisheries numbers along the Brazilian coastline, says a study based on a database of coral reef fishing data from 1950-2015. The study was developed by…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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