Project Piaba is sited in Barcelos, Brazil. It has multiple aims, the main ones being to learn more about the status of fishes and the ornamental fish trade in the area, prevent overexploitation, preserve fish habitat, and improve the lives of local collectors. The main fish exported from this area is the Cardinal Tetra, which provides approximately 85% of the catch. The catch of Cardinal tetras has remained relatively stable, but it appears that the catch per unit effort may be going down (Chao and Prang, 2002)(Gerstner et al. 2006).
Catch per unit effort measures the number of fish caught per unit of effort. Units of effort are often defined by the number of people or number of ships fishing, or the total amount of time spent fishing, or some combination of the above. A lower catch per unit effort means that it takes more effort to catch the same number of fish. In this case, this could indicate that there is overexploitation occurring, as this has been one of the indications that a fishery is going into decline in major food fisheries such as the Atlantic Cod (Icthyology notes, UVic 2004). However, judging from Chao and Prang’s information, there does not appear to be immediate danger to the Cardinal Tetra’s survival. I hope that they and the rest of project Piaba will pay attention to the situation so that the Cardinal population does not decline severely.
The hopes of the project are that extraction of fish from the forest can prevent deforestation by providing an alternate livelihood, and that this can be done in a sustainable manner. To accomplish this, they provided information about ornamental fish trade to the people of Barcelos. They have also done some basic research on the ecology of the ornamental fish in the area, including some long-term monitoring (Chang and Prang, 2002). This is unusual in the ornamental fish trade and valuable, because there is too little research into ornamental fish populations in the wild.
Overall, it appears a useful initiative that it would be useful to copy elsewhere, although I would like to see more independent research on ornamental fishes conducted by a group that is not connected so closely to the ornamental fish trade, and some attention paid to the decreasing catch per unit effort. Declining catch per unit effort alone is inadequate to fully determine what is occurring with a population (Maunder et. al., 2006), but it is a very bad sign. They probably need to lower their catches to make the fishery truly sustainable.
Chao, N., Prang, G.(2002). Decade of Project Piaba: Reflections and Prospects. Official Publication of Ornamental Fish International 39
http://www.neaq.org/scilearn/research/pdf/14__.pdf
Gerstner, C., Ortega, H., Sanchez, H.,and Graham, D. (2006) Effects of the freshwater aquarium trade on wild fish populations of the peruvian amazon. Journal of Fish Biology. 68:862-875
Monder, M., Sibert, J., Fonteneau A., Hampton, J., Kleiber, P., Harley, S. (2006) Interpreting catch per unit effort data to assess the status of individual stocks and communities ICES journal of marine science 63: 1373-1385
Reimchen, T. E. (2004) Icthyology class notes, University of Victoria