In Copacabana, emblematic beach of Rio, artisanal fishermen in search of relief

June 10, 2023

Every day, in the early morning, the fisherman Manoel Rebouças pushes his motor boat through the sand to reach the ocean, long before the arrival of tourists.

Near the Fort of Copacabana, at one end of the most famous beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the waters are calmer, without too many waves.

This is where a colony of fishermen founded a century ago, in 1923, operates. In Rio, artisanal fishing is undermined by competition from industrial fishing, pollution and the lack of vocations.

Manoel Rebouças, 63, has been the president of colony Z13 in Copacabana since 2020.

With his son Manasi, he leaves the coast in his modest boat and stops the engine a few minutes later, in the vicinity of the Cagarras archipelago, visible from the entire beach.

When he pulls up his net installed the day before, this stocky man with graying hair grimaces under his black cap. He did catch a few anchovies and croakers, but we are far from miraculous fishing.

“There are a lot fewer schools of fish, they no longer approach the coast as before,” he laments.

But his son Manasi, 34, is keeping spirits up. “Even if the fishing is not so good, the feeling of being here, in the middle of the ocean, gives us energy.”

The din of the city is no more than a distant murmur and the fishermen have a breathtaking view of Sugar Loaf Mountain and Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado.

But they don’t have time to admire the view.

“You have to bring the fish back quickly because customers come to buy them for their lunch,” explains Manoel Rebouças.

Once back on the beach, he only has a few meters to go to transport the fruit of his catch in a plastic tub to the small kiosk set up below the Copacabana fort.

“We are regular customers. We know the guys, we know they go out to sea early to bring fresh, quality merchandise,” says Mauricio Thomson, a canoe instructor who works on the beach.

Tuna, tilapia, mussels, octopus… The variety is there, and “the best restaurants in town” come to stock up there, can we read on the site of the centenary colony Z13 of Copacabana, where work some 50 fishermen.

They are inseparable from the history of this district whose urbanization began at the end of the 19th century. “When the district was baptized Copacabana (an allusion to Our Lady of Copacabana, patron saint of a locality on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia), there were already fishermen here”, assures Manoel Rebouças.

Beyond the presence in the bay of Rio of large industrial fishing boats, artisanal fishing is affected by the pollution caused by the oil activity in the region, estimates the sociologist Lara Mattos, of the NGO Nucleo Canoas.

This association has set up with the colony a training course for young fishermen.

The project is financed by funds from an agreement signed by the American oil giant Chevron (whose operations have since been taken over by the Brazilian company PetroRio) with the prosecution after a leak of 3,000 barrels of crude during the perforation of a well off the coast of Rio in 2011 and 2012.

Traditional fishermen “take into account the cycles of marine life and know that biodiversity must be preserved”, explains the sociologist.

The first 20 young people trained will graduate at the end of June. “You have to be careful to sew the net well, otherwise the fish will escape,” says Izabely Albuquerque, 19, who handles the needle with dexterity.

At the end of the training, the young people receive nets, protective equipment, but also a card from the Fishermen’s Register, which gives a more formal framework to their profession, as well as access to certain social rights.

“My father is a fisherman, I have been fishing with my brother since we were little, and now, thanks to the training, I can get the card,” says Gilmar Ferreira, 39.