Amazônia: gestão pesqueira ameaçada por barragens / Amazon: fishery management threatened by dams

Abstract

In Brazil, closed season is a management measure (Law 11,959/2009) that aims at temporarily halting fishery to preserve species that have commercial interest, having as a motivation their reproduction and/or recruitment. Such management has been crucial to warrant fishery stocks, as well as the livelihoods of riverside communities in Amazon. However, changes in the fluviometric cycle caused by the construction of dams have altered the period of reproductive migration, as well as the recruitment of fish populations. Although these environmental impacts have been scientifically proved, no changes in the closed season periods have been implemented in order to adapt fishery activities to the new reproductive cycle of fish species at fresh water basins affected by dams in the Amazon. It is therefore crucial that changes in the country’s fishery legislation be conducted as soon as possible, introducing new management closed season rules exclusive to ecosystems that have been impacted by dams.