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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.
The authors of the study interviewed by Mongabay say that in Brazil’s north and northeast, most of these fish are caught by traditional fishers, while in the south and southeast, most are caught by industrial fishing vessels. Brazilian legislation defines subclasses for both traditional and industrial fishing craft, representing a gradation of boats ranging from small to large.
A second finding in the study is that the mix of fish species caught has changed over the years due to the availability of fisheries stock, which leads to increased diversity among the fish captured.). This means that we are fishing almost everything that is out there, from predators at the top of the food chain down to herbivorous fish,” affirms Mariana Bender, a biologist at Santa Maria Federal University’s Department of Ecology and Evolution and senior author of the paper.
Greenbeak parrotfish populations have declined along the Brazilian coastline. Image courtesy of Linda Eggertsen.