Nearly 1/3 of the fish life caught each year is considered BY-CATCH and thus discarded by the fishermen.
Fishing boats kill and dispose of life they have stripped of the ocean, simply because they catch species that are not as profitable as others.
What about the value of life...?
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Logs & Blogs
Santa Isabel and Sao Gabriel
Dec 7, 2011
30.11-1.12
Segments from Dr. Marc Shaw's Log entries
The approach to this important village is very pretty. Lots of small islands around – some with habitation but most without. Menfolk fishing. Women washing. Small kids running along and waving to us, perhaps accompanied by some dog or not.
I recognise little of it: the crooked cross over the Church, perhaps. It has changed much from the ‘one hick’ town that I remember it to have been. It is now quite an affluent place: a flash petrol station, a high school with many typical teenagers, shops that have good supply of basic goods and also with an occasional luxury, beer shops – lots of beer shops, a few well-disposed houses that have had significant financial input, a well-built hospital that looks quite new and which has note yet been tainted by the conditions of the tropics. Walk out of the ‘main drag’ a little and there the impact of the tropical environment is evident.
Alfred Russel Wallace described this well in his book of 1853 – ‘A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro’ – when he wrote “The general impression of the [city] to a person fresh from England is not very favourable. There is such a want of freshness and order, such an appearance of neglect and decay, such evidences of apathy and indolence, as to be at first painful. But this soon wears off, and some of these peculiarities are seen to be dependant on the climate. The large and lofty rooms, with boarded floors and scanty furniture, and with a half-dozen doors and windows in each, look at first comfortless, but are nevertheless exactly adapted to a tropical country, in which a carpeted curtained, and cushioned room would be unbearable”.
At night-time, or when we stop to let the storms pass, there is silence. Then the sounds of the jungle begin their symphony. Often there is a natural climax to ‘the piece’ with the booming sounds of thunder and the flashing and blinding beams of lightening. Rain on the water. Refreshing. Cooling. For awhile there is less humidity.
Language has been a problem for us and indeed anyone in a foreign clime foresees that. Still we try to communicate and that is part of our enjoyment; namely trying to put a smile on the faces of those that we visit, rather than just take from the locals in the way of indulging ourselves at their expense… so often is this done with those that visit different cultures.
Breakfast next morning and I talk with Miguel about his life and journey here in the Amazon, our journey and what we hope to achieve and about Brazilian politics. The latter is apparently very corrupt, an give little hope for a future of care and share with the locals in this region. It is hard to see too much finance coming to this very remote region of Brazil because there is really not too much here – apparent from beauty and all that this word conveys!
This region IS just beautiful and there is such a lot of it. 20% of the world’s fresh water comes from the region. The drainage contains over 2000 fish species that are known about. The Amazon supports 2000 plus species of bird, 20% of the world’s total. Insects abound in this region and scientists estimate that up to 20 plus million species remain undiscovered.
All very well to have such a wonderful population but none of them can vote. ‘Aye, there’s the rub’!
