I thought I knew a little bit about fishing…until I went out in the Amazon!  The Amazon is full of fish and it turns out it isn’t that hard to catch them, as long as you aren’t targeting a specific species…that’s a little bit tougher.

During my stay in Brazil I had the opportunity to go out to a small floating fishing community just passed the “Meeting of the Waters”, in Catala?, to help a grad student from INPA (National Institute of Amazonia Research) with her fish community research.  The technique for collecting was described to me as a mix of throw netting and seine netting but once out in the field I was blown away by the difference in what I had been envisioning and the actual practice.  When the fishermen started dropping a net around a grouping of floating plants and paddling into the tangling mess, I thought “let’s see how they pull this off…”.  Just a few minutes later I was standing on the small canoe amazed as they had easily pulled the net in without any hookups and loaded one of our bins with fish!  The process was repeated over and over and every time with the same success .It was pretty awesome watching how fluid and easy it all seemed to the fishermen!

I hope you enjoy the pictures!