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The Catfish Connection: Ecology, Migration andConservation of Amazon PredatorsPeter B. Bayley aa Oregon State University , Corvallis, Oregon, 97331, USAPublished online: 09 Jan 2011.

To cite this article: Peter B. Bayley (1998) The Catfish Connection: Ecology, Migration and Conservation of Amazon Predators,Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 127:6, 1082-1083, DOI: 10.1577/1548-8659(1998)127<1082b:TCCEMA>2.0.CO;2

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1577/1548-8659(1998)127<1082b:TCCEMA>2.0.CO;2

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Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 127:1082–1083, 1998q Copyright by the American Fisheries Society 1998

BOOK REVIEWS

So Fruitful a Fish: Ecology, Conservation, andAquaculture of the Amazon’s Tambaquı́. By Car-los Araujo-Lima and Michael Goulding. ColumbiaUniversity Press, New York. 1997. 191 pages.$45.00.

The authors have written an interesting andthought-provoking book on one of the Amazon Riv-er’s principal food fishes, tambaquı́ Colossoma ma-cropomum. Michael Goulding has studied the ecol-ogy of Amazon River fishes since the early 1970s.He has authored or coauthored five books on therelationship of the Amazon River fishes and floodedforest and the importance of the capture fishery tothe diets of Amazon basin inhabitants. Carlos Ar-aujo-Lima is a senior scientist and director of grad-uate studies in the Aquatic Biology Program at theNational Institute of Amazonian Research in Ma-naus, Brazil. The authors have done a good job ofreviewing the English, Portuguese, and Spanish lan-guage literature on the life and times of the tamba-quı́. Chapters on the classification, distribution, mi-gration, natural reproduction, and nursery habitattell readers where the fish is found and how it man-ages to procreate in the world’s largest river. Theauthors provide detailed information on the feedinghabits of tambaquı́ and how they use abundant fruitsand seeds falling from trees in the flooded forest toprovide nutritional reserves needed to supplement amore meager diet of zooplankton and insects duringthe season of low water. Tambaquı́ attain weights inexcess of 30 kg on a diet of fruits and seeds, andinformation on their age and growth and metabolismis furnished. A chapter on the capture fisheries andmethods used by artisanal and commercial fishers isenlightening. Imagine capturing tambaquı́ on hookand line baited with fruits dropped into the waterwith a loud splash to attract the hungry fish. Unfor-tunately, as the human population within the Ama-zon basin has grown, the demand by consumers fortambaquı́ has increased. The use of gill nets, an in-creased fleet of large motorized boats with ice stor-age, and improved market prices have resulted intambaquı́ harvests marked by a high percentage ofsmall juveniles and increased catch per unit effort.

The authors suggest aquaculture as a salvation fortambaquı́ in the Amazon. Chapters provide infor-mation on the induced spawning, diseases, fry rear-ing, and food fish grow out in earthen ponds andcages by using a variety of culture techniques. The

authors recommend that cultivated orchards of na-tive seed-producing and fruit trees be the source offeeds to intensively culture tambaquı́, replacing ex-pensive commercially produced pellets. They alsosuggest that hatchery-reared juvenile tambaquı́could be stocked into the flooded forest to replenishnative stocks and support a program of river ranch-ing to sustain the capture fishery. Tambaquı́ havenumerous characteristics that favor both intensiveand extensive cultivation. Unfortunately, the flavor-ful flesh is full of intramuscular bones that interferewith consumer acceptance outside its native range.Suggestions for large tambaquı́ farms within theAmazon basin—to provide economic benefits toarea inhabitants and fish for domestic and interna-tional consumption—fade when high costs of farm-ing tambaquı́ within the Amazon are coupled withthe difficulty of marketing a bony fish. The salvationof the tambaquı́ probably lies with improved gov-ernment enforcement of size limits and closed cap-ture seasons.

The authors provide a well-written and captivat-ing book on the Amazon River and its flagship fish,the tambaquı́. This reviewer is not aware of anotherbook that so thoroughly covers the ecology, biology,and aquaculture of a single fish species. This bookwill make an excellent addition to the bookshelvesof ecologists, fishery scientists, aquaculturists, andnaturalists interested in how a fish has adapted toand is used by the inhabitants of one of the uniqueaquatic environments on earth.

LEONARD L. LOVSHIN

Department of Fisheries and Allied AquaculturesAuburn University, Alabama 36849, USA

The Catfish Connection: Ecology, Migration andConservation of Amazon Predators. By RonaldoBarthem and Michael Goulding. Columbia Univer-sity Press, New York. 1997. 144 pages. $45.00.

This book progresses in a logical fashion fromintroducing the major players (12 large catfish spe-cies plus a shark and a sawfish) to describing thefishing technology, yields and markets, migrations,and diets, and then finishing with some thoughts onevolution and management. In parallel, the frequen-cy of speculative ideas increases, but I believe thisis acceptable and important considering the current

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scattered knowledge we have and the necessity tosubmit ideas for further observation and testing. Be-ing familiar with the authors’ work in the field, Ican vouch for the rigor of their observations, whichare distinguished from synthesis and speculation inthe text. The remainder of this critique focuses onpresentation and some ambiguities in approximateorder of their occurrence.

Possibly in the authors’ or publisher’s interest toreach a wider audience, some terms resulted in am-biguities that require some sleuthing from the read-er. For example, annual river level ‘‘fluctuation’’ isused instead of ‘‘amplitude’’ (page 6). Fluctuation,meaning ‘‘irregular variation,’’ has a converse rela-tionship because such variation is higher at Iquitosupstream. Likewise, large floodplain development isequated to ‘‘elevation’’ rather than ‘‘gradient’’ (page10). Counterintuitively, such development is greaterat some relatively higher elevations in Bolivia andPeru for geological reasons.

There are scattered minor errors that are inevita-ble when marshalling such a large and diverseamount of information. Among these, the ottertrawling described has no otter boards (page 51,Figure 3.11); pair trawling is the appropriate term.However, the photographs are excellent, and the un-reported presence of a pirarara alongside the piraı́bain Figure 2.5 was a minor oversight.

Although there are several useful maps, the readerwill sometimes have trouble understanding wherethe fish or their attributes of interest were located inthe river system. For example, Iranduba (Figure 5.2)could not be located. A single map at one end ofthe book showing all the locations referred to wouldhave been useful. The meaning of ‘‘central Ama-zon’’ (e.g., page 83), while approximate, could havebeen conveyed graphically to distinguish it from‘‘western Amazon’’ and other regions. The geo-graphic implications of the data would also havebeen clearer if plots showing linear progressions(e.g., Figures 5.2 and 5.9) were aligned accordingto their common x-axes and ordered according totheir river location, as was done in other cases (Fig-ure 5.10).

The diet categories of catfish prey (pages 111–112) corresponded, albeit with changes in namesand order, with the prey weights in Figure 6.4. The

reported 75% of microphagous fish in the diet (page112) did not correspond to the 44% value in Table6.4, probably because the latter was a less-infor-mative unweighted mean. A more complete pictureof trophic origins would have resulted if the preyspecies in Table 6.1 or Figures 6.1–6.4 had beenidentified according to these categories.

Predator–prey ratios (page 105) were not esti-mated as claimed (Table 6.2). However, inspectionof the graphs (Figure 6.5) indicated that none of theprey length/predator length regressions had inter-cepts that could be significantly different from zero.This would have permitted direct estimates of theratios, with confidence limits, preferably after a cor-rection from fork length to standard length of thepredators. Dimensionless predator–prey ratio statis-tics are more meaningful and useful for comparisonwith other published results and theory.

However, these peccadillos should not detractfrom the value and originality of the ‘‘Catfish asPredators’’ (5piscivores) chapter. Information onprey of piscivores at this level of detail is uncom-mon in literature from the tropics. The approximate,but conservative, estimates of prey consumption andthe comparison with human predation rates (mod-erate by tropical multispecies standards) were wellconceived and presented. Further development ofthis theme would have been useful. Comparison ofboth predation rates with published, conservativeestimates of floodplain fish production would haveput the current estimated rates in perspective. Fur-ther development of this theme will hopefully set upsome important hypotheses of river–floodplain func-tions in the future.

In conclusion, this book brings together valuableinformation on large, riverine migratory fishes. It isvaluable not only because of widespread interest inthe Amazon but also because the ecological coun-terparts in most other large rivers have been all butdestroyed before equivalent studies were undertak-en. Therefore, anyone who is interested in fish mi-grations, predation in a relatively pristine environ-ment, or fisheries and riverine fish in general shouldread The Catfish Connection.

PETER B. BAYLEY

Oregon State UniversityCorvallis, Oregon 97331, USA

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