🐟 Pirarucu-nomics

Barely beneath the surface of the Amazon basin’s rivers there lives an apex predator that would look more at home in a sci-fi thriller or a documentary on the Jurassic period. Reaching up to three meters long, weighing 200 kilograms and sporting armor-like diamond-shaped scales, Arapaima gigas — best known by its Portuguese name, pirarucu — is one of the largest freshwater fish on the planet.

And for generations, it has provided a livelihood and sustenance to communities across the Amazon, with grilled, baked or fried pirarucu being among the most popular menu items in restaurants from Tabatinga to Belém. It has even begun making an appearance in luxury markets, including fine dining in Manaus and designer cowboy boots in Texas made from its leather-like skin.

But just 30 years ago, it looked like the pirarucu was at risk of going extinct. Overfishing led the state of Amazonas to decree a blanket ban on capture at the end of the 1990s, but community-led sustainable management models brought the massive fish back from the brink — leading to population increases of 400% to 600% in some monitored areas.

Strategies married scientific validation with ancestral local knowledge about pirarucu behavior, and brought traditional fishing communities into the fold as conservation agents. One example of this intersection came from locals' insight that pirarucu surface for air every 5 to 20 minutes, with the most experienced fishers able to use this observation to accurately count the number of individuals in a given lake or river. These counts were then used to calculate maximum capture rates and protect population levels.

“The pirarucu is a species of transformation,” noted ecologist João Campos-Silva, president of conservation nonprofit Instituto Juruá. “It connects conservation, economy and social organization.”

And the recovery of this iconic and transformative fish species is now serving as something of a living laboratory for a proposed shift in Brazil’s economic model, in the Amazon and beyond: the so-called bioeconomy…

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