Ka’a Journal
The pirarucu: how a giant fish shows that protection pays off
It grows up to three metres long, breathes air – and had almost disappeared. Today the pirarucu is one of the Amazon’s great success stories. At our summer event in Berlin, we painted it together.
- Event
- Instituto Juruá
- Bioeconomy
In summer 2024, at a Ka’a Harmony event in Berlin, we painted a large banner together: a pirarucu, colourful, with shimmering scales. Why this fish of all fish? Because its story shows what is possible when local people protect their nature themselves – and can make a living from it.
A giant that breathes air
The pirarucu (arapaima) is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world: up to three metres long and around 200 kilograms. It has to come to the surface regularly to breathe. That is exactly what made it vulnerable – it was easy to hunt. Overfishing caused stocks to collapse dramatically in many parts of the Amazon by the 1990s.
Counting instead of guessing
The turning point came with a strikingly simple idea: precisely because the pirarucu surfaces to breathe, it can be counted. Experienced fishers watch a lake in fixed time windows of about 20 minutes and count the animals that surface. Studies show that trained counters achieve very accurate results this way.
- Based on the count, communities apply to the environmental agency IBAMA for a catch quota.
- At most 30% of adult fish may be caught – the remaining 70% secure the next generation.
- Only fish longer than 1.5 metres may be taken; at that size, most have already reproduced.
- Communities guard their lakes themselves all year round against illegal fishing.
The result: a high-interest savings account
A long-term study on the Juruá River compared 83 lakes over eight years: community-protected lakes held around 300 pirarucu on average – open-access lakes only about nine. The researchers likened protected lakes to a “high-interest savings account”: on average, more than 10,000 US dollars of income per community per year is possible. Instituto Juruá reports a 425% increase in stocks in its project area within eleven years.
The fish is processed by local organisations such as the producers’ association ASPROC from Carauari and sold under the collective brand “Gosto da Amazônia”. This keeps a larger share of the revenue with the families. And because communities guard their lakes, river turtles, birds and the surrounding forest benefit too.
Why this matters so much to us
For us, the pirarucu is more than a fish. It is proof that conservation and income are not opposites – when local people decide and benefit. Our partner Instituto Juruá supports this model scientifically. With our banner in Berlin, we wanted to bring this story to Europe. And we keep telling it.
