问答题It was one of those days that the peasant fishermen on this tributary of the Amazon River dream about. With water levels falling rapidly at the peak of the dry season, a giant school of bass, a tasty fish that fetches a good price at markets, was swimming right into the nets being cast from a dozen small canoes here. But hovering nearby was a large commercial fishing vessel. The crew on board was just waiting for the remainder of the fish to move into the river’s main channel, where they intended to scoop up as many as they could with their efficient gill nets. A symbol of abundance to the rest of the world, the Amazon is experiencing a crisis of overfishing. As stocks of the most popular species diminish to worrisome levels tensions are growing between subsistence fishermen and their commercial rivals, who are eager to enrich their bottom line and satisfy the growing appetite for fish of city-dwellers in Brazil and abroad. In response, peasants up and down the Amazon, here in Brazil and in neighboring countries like Peru, are forming cooperatives to control fish catches and restock their rivers and lakes. But that effort, increasingly successful, has only encouraged the commercial fishing operations, as well as some of the peasants’ less disciplined neighbors, to step up their depredations. The industrial fishing boats, the big 20- to 30-ton vessels, they have a different mentality than us artisanal fishermen, who have learned to take the protection of the environment into account, said the president of the local fishermen’s union. They want to sweep everything up with their dragnets and then move on, benefiting from our work and sacrifice and leaving us with nothing.