Is there a future for artisanal fishing in the Amazon? The case of Arapaima gigas.

In the last ten years Araipama gigas, commonly known as pirarucu, expanded its distribution upstream into the Madeira River rapids where it is not a native species. The invasion was favored by escapes from Peruvian fish farms upstream in the Madeira River Basin, where they have been raising pirarucu since the 1970s. Although the Madeira River rapids had formerly represented a geographical barrier to this invasion by limiting floodplain habitats, the construction of the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in 2011 flooded the two most important falls, replacing the rapids stretch with a lentic or semi-lentic habitat favoring the invasion of A. gigas. Since construction of the dams, fisheries reports have been marked by the decrease of traditional commercial species, coupled with the presence of invasive populations of A. gigas. This example highlights a major emergent threat to artisanal fishing in the Amazonian freshwater system: government policies favoring dam construction and the consequent spread of native fish species used in aquaculture to new regions upstream of waterfalls where they are not native. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]