Traditional Brazilian Fishery Flounders

["Suzana Hauer" <shauer at attglobal.net>]

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November 1, 2001

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Page One Feature
Traditional Brazilian Fishery Flounders
In Wake of Technology; War With Boats
By MIRIAM JORDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


PRAINHA DO CANTO VERDE, Brazil -- Beto de Lima's 20-foot wooden fishing boat
looks something like an overgrown windsurfer, yet it climbs deftly up set
after set of towering Atlantic waves.

Until, that is, one wave rocks it violently and Mr. De Lima's crew members
shout an alarm: an oar has slipped out of the boat and been sucked into a
whirlpool. Mr. De Lima plunges into the water to retrieve it, disappearing
for several minutes beneath the white foam.

It's just another day at the office.

Mr. De Lima is a jangadeiro, captain of a jangada (pronounced jung-AH-da), a
compact, storied sailing vessel that has been ferrying Brazilian fishermen
to far away lobstering and fishing grounds since the 16th century. Jangada
fishing has always been grueling, dangerous work, pitting small craft and
tough, ingenious sailors against a fickle and sometimes treacherous sea. Of
late, though, jangadeiros have faced obstacles far more fierce than the
ocean: competition from motorized dive boats, often manned by poorly trained
human divers. The boats use illegal fishing techniques that are stripping
Brazil's fishing grounds of their stocks, and threatening to put an end to
Brazil's historic jangada fleet.

Consider this trip: Mr. De Lima and his crew will return with only three
pounds of lobster after two nights and three days at sea. Pile, Beto's
father, says that in the 1960s he used to return from such voyages with more
than 200 pounds. Unlike his father, who fed his wife and 15 children on
fishing earnings, Beto must make and sell fruit popsicles in his spare time
to earn enough money to support a family of three.

"Fishing has been in the family for 200 years," says Mr. De Lima. "Now, our
ability to build a future as fishermen is fading away."

The De Limas are hardly alone. In Cumbuco and Canoa Quebrada, once two of
the largest fishing villages along the lobster-rich coast of the northeast
Brazilian state of Ceara, only about 10 jangadas remain, compared with about
60 two decades ago. In economically desperate villages such as Fontes Beach,
also in Ceara, land speculators have bought up the beaches where traditional
fishermen launch their boats, putting up condos and hotels and crowding
jangadeiros into an area resembling a slum.


A traditional Brazilian jangada.

Rather than following in the footsteps of their fathers, many of Prainha's
youth are migrating to Brazil's cities to take jobs stocking supermarket
shelves and sweeping hotel lobbies. Others are risking their lives to earn
fast cash in the disease-ridden gold mines of the Amazon. Maimede Dantas, a
Prainha fisherman who has agitated for jangadeiro rights, says he has "lost"
two of his sons to the allure of Brazil's biggest city, Sao Paulo.

"The jangadeiro will become extinct before the lobster," predicts Adauto
Fontele, a marine-life researcher at the Federal University of Ceara.

What makes the jangadeiros' slow demise especially sad for many Brazilians
is the central role the fishermen have played in national lore and political
protest movements. In the 1940s, four jangadeiros captured the imagination
of the country -- and of American film director Orson Welles -- by sailing
3,500 miles from a northeastern village to Rio de Janeiro to demand that
Brazil's military dictator grant basic labor rights to fishermen. Mr. Welles
came to Brazil to film a documentary about the jangadeiros' expedition, but
shooting stopped when the fishermen's leader, known as Jacare, was lost at
sea while trying to recreate the voyage on film.

"Jangadeiros are warriors of the sea," says Francisco Moreira, president of
Terramar, a group that works with traditional fishermen in Ceara, Brazil's
largest lobster-producing region.

In some cases these days, the jangadeiros are literally fighting back
against what they see as the predations of dive boats, whose divers use
weighted nets or long rods of baited hooks to catch hundreds of pounds of
lobsters in a few hours, often breaking up reefs in the process. Moreover,
Brazilian coast-guard officials say they are fielding an increasing number
of complaints by traditional fishermen who accuse dive boats of trying to
ram jangadas and sabotage harvests by yanking out their lobster traps. Mr.
De Lima, in fact, in an incident recorded by the coast guard earlier this
year, said he narrowly thwarted an effort by a dive boat to run him down, by
tossing out a rope that became tangled in the attackers' propeller.

In the face of such incidents, clashes between jangadeiros and dive boats
have escalated, and some traditional fishermen have struck back by
commandeering dive boats at sea and sinking or burning them.

Reminder of India

Some see this as a critical juncture for a craft and fishing style dating
back to native Indians when the Portuguese arrived in northeast Brazil in
the 16th century. The name comes from an association -- the boats reminded
the European settlers of sailing rafts they had seen in India, known as
janga.

The fishermen have long been known for their social activism as well as
their bravery. Back in the 19th century, a jangadeiro known as "Sea Dragon"
was a prominent activist against the slave trade here. The jangadeiros'
fatalistic courage often inspired Brazilian songwriters and poets. "It's
sweet to die in the sea," says one song, "in the green waves of the sea."

Jangadas have changed only a little over the centuries. They are now
constructed with planks of wood rather than balsa wood logs. Every piece of
the vessel is handmade, except the anchor, which is made of stone. The raft
is steered from a simple wooden bench positioned at the end of the vessel.
It is launched from beaches by crew members rolling the craft on logs across
the sand.

To keep the sail taut -- and better able to endure the wind -- one crew
member often splashes water onto it using a coconut shell. Two of the four
crew members stand on the edge of the boat, tugging on thick ropes attached
to the vessel and using their weight to keep it on an even keel. The
jangadeiros know by the color of the water where to lay their traps. The
traps, made of twigs and wire mesh, look a little like rectangular
birdcages. "We memorize the reference points near the lobster territory,"
says Joao Fernandes, 40. "I don't need a compass or a navigation system."

Tiny Tails

Still, jangadeiros' fishing prowess has proved to be no match for the highly
mechanized dive boats, which first began appearing in the mid-1980s and
proliferated in the past decade in response to escalating prices on
international lobster markets. In fact, fisheries experts here say the U.S.,
as the biggest importer of Brazilian lobsters, is unwittingly contributing
to the demise of the jangadeiros because of its appetite for small lobster
tails.

Though Brazilian law bans the capture of lobsters with tails smaller than
five inches -- catching immature lobsters jeopardizes future harvests by
taking the crustaceans out of the system before they can reproduce -- the
law is widely flouted by the divers, and enforcement is lax, environmental
groups say. Many, in fact, blame such poaching for a 61% decline in Brazil's
lobster population during the past decade.

"The U.S. has created a market for really small tails, so back in Brazil
they keep catching them," says Paul Raymond, a special agent specializing in
lobster trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

This has all made for desperate times. In the village of Canoa Quebrada,
jangadeiros not long ago exchanged plots of beachfront land where they once
docked their boats for a boom box or a few dollars offered by foreigners.
"We don't fish for real fish anymore," says jangadeiro Ze de Luca. "We fish
for tourists."