Overfishing Devastates Brazil Waters : Environment: Species approach extinction as trawlers armed with gill nets scoop up schools of fish. Up to 60% of their catch is lost to spoilage. Subsistence fishermen are losing their way of life.

His skiff rocking in rolling blue hills of water, Joao Batista Rodrigues reels in one of his fishing lines and hoists a gray, thorny skate into the air.

The grin on his wind-cracked lips melts into a scowl. With a grunt, he unhooks the ugly little fish and flings it back into the waves.

Trash fish.

“Hell, I used to pull in stingray, snook, even small sharks,” he mutters. “Now the big boats come with their nets and take everything but baby fish.”

Overfishing by trawlers and high-tech speedboats has depleted the fabled fishing grounds near this jungle port and pushed a number of species in the Amazon Basin toward extinction.

Fishermen who routinely filled sailboats with fish in a few hours now return to port in nearly empty vessels.

And the people of this sleepy equatorial city--weaned on a traditional diet of shrimp, tuna, snapper and Amazon turtle--are reeling from the higher prices and diminishing variety of fresh fish.

“The waters around here are dying,” said Joao Vargas de Conceicao, 45, vice president of the local fisherman’s union. “I’m telling the boys to look for work inland. Fishing is coming to an end here.”

Ever since the Portuguese arrived in Guajara Bay on Jan. 12, 1616, and built a fortress here at the mouth of the Amazon River, fishing has been the backbone of Belem’s economy and the frame of its regional identity.

Generations grew up sprinkling lime juice and salt on flame-broiled tambaqui and piramutaba, sweet fish with leathery skin that reach 7 feet in length in the cool, silt-brown waters of the Amazon.

Under the shade of spreading mango trees, locals have long gathered at noon to slurp “tacaca,” a thick soup of tapioca, manioc juice, pepper, garlic and shrimp served with a blue “jambo” leaf in a wooden bowl.

“Mariscuadores,” the subsistence fishermen who live along the Amazon’s tributaries, brought to market the “peixe-boi” --manatee--whose flesh tastes like ham and keeps for years with simple preparation.

At the Mercado Ver o Peso down at the docks, stalls were always filled with dozens of species from shrimp, lobster, bonito, and turtle to Amazon fish such as enchova, pirarucu or tucunare.

Until now.

“There is a serious problem of overfishing, especially by shrimp and lobster boats,” said Ronaldo Barthem, a marine specialist at the government’s Emilio Goeldi Institute in Belem.

Shrinking shrimp catches are a sign of impending disaster. Trawlers off the Para state coast scooped up 5,000 tons of shrimp last year, 1,000 tons fewer than in 1989. And the catch is expected to decline further, Barthem said.

Small-boat fishermen blame power launches that trawl the high seas. These 350-foot vessels zigzag through fishing grounds on autopilot while crews track schools of fish on sonar screens.

Using joystick levers, trawler crews guide nets 180 feet wide and 90 feet long with 1.2-inch holes into the heart of schools.

“It’s like a video game you can’t lose,” said Rodrigues, a sun-wrinkled man of 38 who has fished up and down Brazil’s northern coast since he was 18. “Nothing escapes the nets.”

Even Conceicao, the fishermen’s union vice president who gave up fishing on his own boat and took work on a trawler 12 years ago, questions the launches’ “pirate” tactics.

“It’s true, the trawlers sweep up tons of fish they don’t want, then throw them overboard, dead and rotten,” he said. “I’ve seen ocean turtles, 30- and 40-pounders, get strangled in the nets. It’s nasty.”

Things aren’t any better in the Amazon Basin, where the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates a typical four-mile stretch of waterway may contain up to 60 species.

High-tech fish finders lead motorboats unerringly to their prey. With their gill nets, the modern fishermen catch five times as many fish as the traditional mariscuadores can with their canoes.

The trouble is that between 50% and 60% of the gill-net catch is usually lost. A fish caught in the net dies in 20 minutes and spoils in half an hour because of the high water temperature, or is devoured by piranhas.

One victim is the manatee, an aquatic relative of the elephant that propels its 2-ton body with a flick of its fantail.

Mariscuadores say they used to bring in five a night. Today, it’s hard to find one outside the Belem zoo.

“The problem is not only the loss of unique marine life,” said Barthem of the Goeldi Institute. “Amazon trees rely on fish to distribute their seeds when the rivers flood. Without the fish, the forest will lose a key pollinator and its ability to regenerate itself can be greatly diminished.”

But what really upsets local residents are the changes at the marketplace. No longer is shopping for a seafood lunch or snack a simple task.

At Trevu’s Restaurant in the old city a few blocks from the wharf, the only fish on the menu is gilthead. The others--tambaqui, tucunare, lobster, shrimp--are all crossed out in pencil.

Alberto Gomes, 62, a hearty man with gel-slicked hair and a barrel belly covered by an apron, has been selling fish at the Ver o Peso Market since 1944. He shucked a foot-long piramutaba and wrapped it for a customer in a huge, green guaruma leaf.

“Tambaqui? Are you kidding?” he said. “Haven’t seen it for two years. We used to sell 3-kilo (7-pound) piramutaba, but they keep getting smaller and smaller. Now all we got are these half-kilo (1.1-pound) ones. No one’s giving ‘em time to grow. It’s a real crime.”

To restore shrimp, snook, lobster and other fish populations, Brazil’s federal environmental protection agency is studying a ban on trawler activity six months each year and moratoriums on fishing permits.

But even with tougher laws, Arnaldo Bittencourt Costa, a fisherman of 48 with tawny hair lightened by 30 years of sailing the South Atlantic, thinks it will take 10 years or more for the fish to recover.

It’s 1 p.m., low tide at the docks, and his 36-horsepower sailboat, Blackie, is stranded in the mud. Most of Costa’s men have strung up their hammocks to posts. Their rum bottles lie empty and they are snoozing.

The Blackie returned that morning after 18 days at sea. The catch wasn’t good. A ton and a half of fish. In the old days, Costa and his eight men used to come to port with five times that amount.

“I can’t keep this up,” Costa says. “We can’t get near the good grounds any more. Even if you go at night, you run the risk of getting plowed by a trawler.”