The tiny fish, barely bigger than a thumb, is one of the most exotic and sought after in the world. On the international black market, gold is worth its weight. Attracted by the prospect of making a fortune, some 400 divers made their way to a remote river in the heart of the Amazon jungle; each time they are ready to dive deeper and catch their breath as they emerge. Their goal is to catch as many of these fish as possible to sell to aquarists and wealthy collectors, but each success makes their prey more and more elusive.
Divers are most active in autumn, because the dry season in the Amazon can come in no time. It is easier for divers to catch fish when the water level in the river is low than during the rainy season, which begins in November in the Amazon.
José Luis Freitas da Silva (26) is one of the divers who is determined to take advantage of the favorable conditions for hunting. He lives in a shack on the bank of the river, he and his family eat what they grow, but they depend on fish - the black and white striped relatives of the catfish. They call the Portuguese fish zebra finch or a zebra. "Every week, the reseller from Altamira sends someone by boat to collect the ransom," he says, while the water is still draining from him and as he arranges his catch on the shore. "I caught a lot of these zebras this week, so I could earn about US$125." The average monthly salary in Brazil is US$75.
PROFITABLE KAO COCAINE: The price of these fish has risen so much in this remote patch of jungle that it often replaces money. You can buy gas, food or medicine for them at the grocery stores on the river bank, and one fish is exchanged for four dollars. Brazil is trying to introduce control of the fish trade and prevent its extinction. But these attempts only further branched out the black market, whose brokers are happy to meet wealthy collectors in the US, Europe and Japan, and who do not care about the rigorous Brazilian laws.
"The profits in this business are incredible, reselling fish is as profitable as dealing cocaine," says Horacio Higuchi, an expert on tropical aquarium species at the Emilio Gueldi Museum in Belém, one of the most respected scientific research institutions in the Amazon. "But the fish trade attracts the most terrible types, who are ready to cut your throat for profit, precisely because there is a lot of it in this business." Divers say that for a particularly valuable specimen they can get five dollars a piece, and the price of an extremely rare albino reaches and 600 US dollars. They are mostly bought by Japanese collectors.
Divers zebra finch they mostly hunt in the Zingu river, but according to Bruno Kemner, the president of the farmers' association and an activist in the fight for environmental protection, there are more and more of them in the Tapazush and Trumpetash rivers as well.
This number of divers destroys the growth of fish, and they are ready to dive deeper and deeper to find them. "I heard that a lot of them died," says Mario Borges de Almeida, a former gold digger who now drives a riverboat. "Almost every one of them has hearing loss, or chronic ear infection, because they are forced to dive deeper and deeper." The divers are poor and almost none of them use diving suits, many do not even have masks. Since the work is illegal, they do not have their own union or association.
DIVERS PAY THE HIGHEST PRICE: "Hunting this fish requires exceptional skill, it's an incredibly painstaking job, and divers pay the highest price," says Antonio Melo, regional representative of Brazil's Institute for Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Restoration, the government's enforcement agency for the protection of rare species. Melo admits that the state cannot prevent the illegal zebra trade. He and five other associates monitor activity along the river and cover an area larger than the state of New Jersey.
Ten years ago, the Brazilian government created a list of 180 protected species of tropical fish. Tropical fish traders also manage by falsifying papers and customs declarations. "There are hundreds more species here that even scientists have not yet fully examined and described," says Higuchi. "And the aquarium species collectors here value Asian species more, such as the goldfish."
