“Antes tinha peixe e não tinha essas coisas, agora tem essas coisas e não tem peixe”: considerações sobre a atividade pesqueira artesanal na Vila dos Pescadores, Bragança – Pará

Abstract

The present study deals with the artisanal fishing activity carried out on the north Brazilian coast, by residents of Vila dos Pescadores, located in the Marine Extractive Reserve (RESEX Mar) of Caeté-Taperaçú, in the municipality of Bragança - Pará. The research aims to characterize this activity, identifying the types of fisheries, the target species and the impacts that threaten the productive capacity of fishermen and artisanal fisherwomen. For that, I tried to identify the main factors of change and the strategies of continuity of the activity, using as methodology the literature review and the field research with ethnographic techniques from semi-structured interviews with fishermen and public sector agents; collection of secondary data through literature review and documental research, and the use of photographic records of the community's daily activities, fishing work and rituals. Lúcia Helena Cunha (2013) mentions that traditional knowledge and modernity are in a complementary relationship, where both undergo changes and are re-signified. Such resignification is also pointed out by Marshall Sahlins (1997). Thus, the results indicate that the modernization of fishing technologies and the construction of Highway PA 458 are presented as the main factors of change, stimulating overfishing and overfishing that interfere, especially in fisheries carried out in the estuary and close to the beach. This set of factors influences the decrease in harvests, harms the use of traditional fishing technologies and affects sociocultural aspects of the group, such as the practice of sharing fish in the port, called kial, carried out by fishermen when they return from fishing - this fish, before intended only for food, it is now marketed as an alternative source of income. The analyzes indicate that the impacts on artisanal fishing can influence the circularity of ecological knowledge essential to the sustainability of this activity when young people move away from fishing and other people turn to extractive practices as subsistence strategies in order to guarantee food security for families. Some of these actions allow the continuity and resignification of local traditional knowledge that guide the ways of interacting with the environment, but others can negatively affect the mangrove ecosystem and local sociocultural practices. Furthermore, the creation of the Marine RESEX did not prevent predatory fishing and overfishing, due to the weak performance of the State in the implementation of an efficient fisheries management system that delimits the areas of activity of artisanal/commercial and semi-industrial fishing (sometimes operating in an unsustainable way in areas far from the coast using fishing net "apoitada" and/or trawl nets) and are in line with the interests of fishermen and artisanal fisherwomen in the community, based on a dialogic relationship.