Fig 1.
Area and fishery production of long-distance migratory catfishes.
The Amazon region, highlighting the countries, departments (Bolivia, Peru, Colombia) or states (Brazil), and fish markets (black dots) where data have been collected, and the main fish landing cities (red points).
Fig 2.
Fishing B. rousseauxii across the Amazon Basin.
(A) A young B. rousseauxii captured in the eastern Amazon River at about the size (50 cm fork length) when the species first begins to migrate upstream in the Amazon River; (B) adult fish in the western Amazon near the Andes that were ready to spawn.
Fig 3.
Industrial trawl fishery for B. vaillantii.
Trawl fisheries in the open waters of the Amazon estuary adjacent to the mouth of the Amazon River account for most of the B. vaillantii catch.
Fig 4.
Colossoma macropomum in the Central Amazon.
Adult C. macropomum are now rare in fisheries because of decades of overexploitation of both mature and immature fish. Floodplain deforestation along the lower Amazon River has also impacted the species.
Table 1.
Scientific and common names of three long-distance migratory species.
Fig 5.
The goliath catfish fishery region and overfishing in the Amazon River estuary.
(A) The industrial trawl fishing zone and the restricted fishing area based on legislation in force. (B) Annual catches (tons) of the B. vaillantii bottom pair-trawler fishing fleet in the Amazon estuary (yellow bars) available for the 1972–2006 period, combined with the Maximum Sustainable Yield proxies (tons) with 95% confidence limits (black line) and the F/FMSY ratio (triangle).
Table 2.
Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) estimates for B. vaillantii.
RRCI’ smoothed relative rate of catch increase.
Table 3.
Population parameters of B. rousseauxii from Madre de Dios and Ucayali rivers.
Fig 6.
Historical trends in the capture of C. macropomum and B. rousseauxii.
(A) Negative exponential trend adjusted to C. macropomum landings in Manaus (tau = -0.809; p<0.05); (B) Linear trend adjusted to C. macropomum landing in Tefé (tau = -0.032; p>0.05); (C) Linear trend adjusted to two periods of B. rousseauxii landings in Porto Velho (tau = -0.039; p<0.05).
Fig 7.
Main states or departments and cities associated with overfishing.
Production in percentage categories. The highlighted cities are responsible for at least 50% of the production. Overfishing of the flagship species considered here needs to be controlled from the major urban ports that account for most of the landings.
Table 4.
C. macropomum size composition in three fishing ports of the Amazon.