HISTORY OF ICHTHYOLOGICAL EXPLORATION IN PERU 21 Corollary to the last-named objective, the field laboratories should undertake studies of life-histories, food-habits, ecology, parasites, etc., almost untouched phases of the subject, except for recent Brazilian efforts. In the highlands of Peru and Chile some new temperate-zone forms have been introduced. Chile has had considerable success with the European brown trout, even well down toward sea-level, in the South.
« i Ra RS 1 > Wark.
Fic. 9. Rio Loa, Chile, and bordering irrigated lands. At this point near Calamafoundtobedevoidoffishes.Elevationabout7000feet.
For some years the Rainbow trout has been a member of the fauna of the upper Mantaro, introduced by the U. 8. Bureau of Fisheries and members of the Cerro de Pasco Company’s staff. The situation there has been modified further by the impounding of the waters of Lake Chinchayeocha. What biological effects this has had on that lake since my visit would be interesting to know. Proposals for the impounding of Lake Titicaca, raising or lowering it, have been made. To do so would greatly affect the biological constitution of it. Such an event may not transpire for many years, but that long-deferred thoroughgoing biological survey should be made. <A suggestion was made by Garman as long ago as 1875 that the lake be used for a large-scale experiment on the introduction of better economic species. Recently an effort has been made to do this, when two million whitefish eggs, and many thousands of lake trout eggs were sent for release there. They also, if successful, will materially alter the biology of the lake and its tributaries, even before a survey can be made of the original fauna, and life histories of Orestias species, ete. be determined under original conditions.
THE FISHERIES OF WEST-CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA The streams of South America are unparalleled for length, width, depth, volume, number and variety of tributaries, and for the intricate network of halfexplored backwater channels—unequalled therefore in the opportunity they have presented to the ichthyfauna for the evolution of species and of populations. The part that fishes have played in the daily lives of the human population is consequently very large. This is true chiefly as a source of food, but also in a variety of other ways, such as the handicrafts, folklore, and religion. Travelers have sometimes reported that this is true, but have brought back little circumstantial information. Few books deal with fishes or fisheries to greater length than a paragraph or as much as a few pages.
Beals uses the word fish at least six times (1934) but makes no mention of fishes. Koebel, writing from the economic point of view, makes the scantiest mention of fisheries and the possibility of their development. He says naively (1915, 233), writing of the native dependence on fish as food: ‘‘it is said that the Amazon contains a freshwater replica of every salt water fish from the whale downwards... the manatee of a size to be hunted by the Indian with the harpoon ... but with the growth of inland communications it is possible that the demand will spring up, in which case no doubt the neglected industry of fish will gain a much-needed impetus.”’ Enoch, trained observer, student of natural resources, hasn’t so much as a line on this particular resource, while Domville-Fife in a book on the economic life of Brazil, gives one brief paragraph to the fisheries of Uruguay, including freshwater and marine.
Whitbeck (1926, 233) in an economic geography, finds room for an account of the vanishing and picturesque vicuna, but makes only passing mention of the fisheries of the coast, none of those of the interior. He discusses the oft-described Sunday market of Huancayo, but hasn’t a word for the shopping habits of all Amazonia; gives all the credit for the production of guano to the birds, none to the fishes who sacrifice their all.
Those pioneer students of natural resources, Herndon and Gibbon, make numerous allusions to fishing, few to fisheries, and as to fishes, they only repeat a few matters told them by the natives. For example, Gibbon thus reports nine kinds found at the outlet of Lake Titicaca and absent at Puno; that there are more kinds in the limpid east side than in the shallow northwest corner. Squier (146, 148, and 173) says “‘the waters of Titicaca hide a variety of strange fishes which contribute to support a population necessarily scanty”. Conversely Bandelier (page 48) reports the Indian population of Titicaca Island not much addicted to fishing. He mentions the occurrence of twelve kinds including bogas and suchis. Means (page 134) gives weight to Penalosa’s account (1586) of the Uru tribe and its dependence on fish and ‘roots of wild plants’? (no doubt the 22
THE FISHERIES OF WEST-CENTRAL SOUTH AMERICA 23 potato). Bowman alludes to the small numbers of native andean groups dependent on fishing, the Urus of the Desaguadero, and a small tribe on the Chilean coast. Martin (1905, 171) says the Para market affords few appetizing fish, but countless turtles (page 214). Mozans (1911, 506) quotes Agassiz as to the vast numbers of Amazon fishes yet marks their total absence aboard the steamers of that river, Fie. 10. The upper Rio Huallaga. Looking upstream to the right. On the left enters a tributaryfedbymeltingglacialicefromtheEasternCordillera,itsmilkywatersdiffusingintothe darkermainstream.TheroadfromCerrodePascotoHudnucoonthemountainsideattheright. Waterssimilartothiscontinueformanymiles,separatingthelowlandfishfaunafromthatofthe highlands.
quoting a steward to the effect that they are too expensive. McGovern (page 54) says that although the Amazon is the angler’s paradise, it was seldom that they were given fresh fish, every meal consisting of salted piraruct, with a flavor like rancid soap. Medina (Lee trans., 1934) frequently points out the dependence of the early explorers upon fresh fish and dried, and the dried flesh of manatee. In all Raimondi’s wide travels, the fisheries resources seem never to have
24 FISHES OF WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA reached the threshold of his consciousness, although undoubtedly sometimes a constant article of diet. They were perhaps a sort of manna, no more worthy of a place in his three great volumes than the sunshine. An encyclopedia should render more space to so important a matter, but the South American Encyclopedia (IXoebel, ed., IV, 1506) has only to say that fish is expensive in the markets and that Amazonia exports less than a million kilos of this, its greatest resource. Nash (1926, 80) laments the excessive fishing of the breeding adult, and of young fishes, of the Atlantic coast.
In spite of the almost universal mention of fisheries by travelers, the accounts we have would attach a very minor importance to them. Yet they are the greatest single food resource of the lowlands. I note that travelers who set forth into the interior with a superabundance of supplies which they often enumerate, frequently meet with disaster and are thrown on the resources of the country. Thus you read more and more about fishes as you approach the final chapters; the fishing stories are directly proportional to their dependence on the country. Often the native populations spend a good part of the dry season on lengthy fishing trips, as described formerly by Bates, Herndon, and others. Whitney (page 117) could not understand why the fishing was done during the low-water season. It isa very common experience in travel along the rivers to pass temporary shelters on the sand-bars, or at the edge of the forest, built of poles or of cane, with palm-thatch. Here families or male members of families are camping or have camped. Nearby are the palm-thatch platforms on poles where the drying of the catch is done.
The whole of the white man’s civilization in the interior is centered about the river. The entire population is distributed along the water-courses, either on the main streams or on the web of backwater channels. The larger towns, such as Iquitos, Contamana or Yurimaguas lie on the more navigable rivers, and various villages such as Xeberos are on the banks of secondary streams and bayoux, off the beaten path. The indigenous tribes are still farther removed toward the upper reaches of the secondary streams. From the Andes to the Atlantic scarcely a road is to be found, except the local footpaths through the forest from one settlement to another. Most of the white man’s dwellings face the streams, the portal of each at the river bank. Here he maintains a floating dock, which is a raft of a size proportional to the volume of his business. Here his fleet is tied up, often consisting of canoes of various sizes. The largest may exceed thirty feet in length and require four to eight paddlers; the smallest light, shallow craft for local use. The largest montarias are often canopied over amidships. On the raft-landing of each farm is maintained working-space for gutting fish, sometimes also the drying platforms. Here the huckster-boats (lanchas) tie up for long hours, bartering with the patron for his fire wood, cotton, tagua-nuts, dried paiche, or other products. Now and then a pig is purchased for consumption on board. The raft is often provided with a bathhouse, or at least a bathing-place. Here guests are met and from here they depart.
METHODS OF FISHING The student of fishes and of fisheries is also much interested in the methods by which fishing is done. Radcliffe rightly remarks that there is little information to be had concerning Peruvian fishing before the Conquest. The writings of the Conquistadores and their more literate companion Church Fathers are devoid of allusions to this and to other ethnic matters. Their mission was rather to learn what was wrong with the native ways of life and to reform them. It is doubtful if many unique, indigenous fishing practises survive without change to our day, except among the most isolated tribes of the tropical forests of the far interior. Among various practises it may be impossible wholly to determine which are native to the country. It is highly probable that certain methods have evolved in various parts of the world independently, and some of them are no doubt the common inheritance of various peoples from before their present distribution about the earth. The blow-gun as a hunting weapon was invented among the tribesmen of both hemispheres; why not also the throw-net? Of methods in use in central South America, we have an excellent list from Haseman (1911¢). I often found my own equipment inadequate for certain fishes or certain localities, and was obliged to resort to local assistance. The people frequently considered my gear a joke.
Net-fishing has taken various forms in South America, but in the interior seems nowhere the principal dependence, as in other parts of the world. Except in marine fishing large nets are almost unknown, although, as described by Ogilvie (1922, 165) seines are employed to some extent in Lake Titicaca, operated from balsa to balsa. In the lowland streams of the interior, my seines were rapidly cut to pieces. Gill-nets would be destroyed in a single setting, and most fishes caught in them eaten by predators. In mountain streams no form of net could be operated among the rocks. Tolten, however (page 255), alludes to the use of large nets for shoals of tratra, and Up de Graff finds the Antipas fishing with nets of fiber, having floats of balsawood.
The throw-net Is a special type of netting practised here as in many parts of the world. The inhabitants construct their own from cotton fiber, using various names for them, Paez calling them tarraya, elsewhere known as iarafa. The Peruvians were much interested in mine, scorning the pocket, or bolsilla around the margin.
In the Lima region with only the pejerrey and the camerones available, the local fishermen work upstream among the rocks with a small semicircular dipnet formed on a bow-like frame. This is pushed ahead, flat side down, held against the knees, while the fisherman reaches upstream, turning the rocks, the current sweeping his catch into the net between his feet.
For work among the pondweed in the Rio Have, I found a local custom of fish- 25
26 FISHES OF WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA ing with a square net similar to the above, but mounted on a curved pole which would enable the operator to rock the net up and down, forcing it through the tangle of plant.
Many authors allude to bow-and-arrow fishing, (Whitney, page 95; Bates, page 77; Fleming, page 153; McGovern, page 234; Orton, page 478, et. seq.; Grubb, page 34). The method is practised chiefly in central Brazil up to the border of our territory. Grubb describes a method of using bow and arrow with the aid of a lure, made of white bark, cut in the form of a fish, whose details are drawn in Fic. 11. Fish-trap in the mouth of the Rio de Tingo, or Rio de Higueros, at Hudnuco on the Rio Huallaga.
charcoal. Herndon describes a fishing arrow with detachable head. His companion, Gibbon (page 193) not only describes, but gives an elaborate drawing of a system of bow-and-arrow fishing used by the Yuracaré tribe. It consists of a series of logs or large poles supported just above the water, and used as runways from which the barefoot fisherman could discharge his shafts into the quiet waters below, recovering them with his catch wherever they came near his footlogs. Hook-and-line methods are little employed in regions I visited, nor did J find fishhooks as ready a medium of exchange with the simple heathen in the traditional manner, as I had hoped. In fact, due to the corrosive effects of climate and the
METHODS OF FISHING 27 voracious ways of certain fishes, the lifetime of a fishook is brief. McGovern, however, page 234, finds the inhabitants of the Uaupés using bone hooks made in evident imitation of the metal ones; Orton found hooks used to some extent (page 478). André describes an implement known as the robador. It was a weighted line, with a row of bare hooks. Thrown among a school of fishes, one or more of the hooks would meet with its prey a sufficiently large number of times. Harpooning is practised in this as in other parts of the world. I was interested to observe three modifications of the method. The first was a homemade ‘‘gig’’, three stout wires sharpened and bound to a pole in the Neptunian manner. Such an implement was seen in use both in the Titicaca region, and on Chinchaycocha, where it was a frogging rather than a fishing weapon. Neither the tines nor the pole are native products of the highlands, and must be gotten through trade. In one of the best early accounts, however, Bandelier (page 48) quotes Father Cobo, as early as 1683, Historia del Mundo Nuevo, II, 227, as to the use of the fisga. This was then a three-pronged harpoon, which they ‘‘used in the right hand while swimming in pursuit of the fish with the left’’. Bandelier justly remarks that swimming in these waters for as much as fifteen minutes would be impossible. I never observed anyone swimming in or about the lake, even for a moment, nor wading longer than necessary.
A second type of harpoon was a two-pronged iron javelin with a shaft consisting of the stem of a cane, of considerable strength, and extreme lightness, used for fishes of moderate size, thrown, not jJabbed.
The third type, however, was a much heavier one, with a wooden shaft of some eight feet in length, capable of floating. A detachable, barbed iron head with a length of cord completed it. Its special usefulness was in taking the larger Pimelodids and the piraruci. Orton (page 478) alludes to the spearing of such fishes. André (page 75) found a combination of gigging of mullet with the luring by torchlight, about the mangroves of Guiana.
Various forms of trapping are practised. Whitney gives a photograph of a type having numerous variants (opp. page 116). It consists of bamboo canes, lashed together, and brought toward a point, like a funnel. Staked in the riffles of a stream, it 1s capable of retaining small fishes unable to make way against a strong current. (Fig. 11). Elsewhere Whitney (page 95) describes a triangular trap made of slats of cakouri palm, such as I frequently saw used for floors. The fishes are taken out of it by hand. MacCreagh (opp. page 369) also figures such a trap used in the Rio Negro region. Tolten (page 235) refers to a wicker baskettrap for “‘bony-scaled”’ catfish, and others refer to basket traps set in waterfalls. An interesting trap was being used on the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca. Made of wicker, its warp was a rope of plaited, native 7chu-grass. A cord of the same material was used to lower the device from a buoy. Its bottom consisted of a funnel-shaped lead-in for the entrance of the victim.
Roth (page 15, fig. 10 and page 16, fig. 11) and (Kahn, page 88) describe spring-traps intended to be baited, and as a refinement of the principle, a springbasket trap.
bo e) é FISHES OF WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA In the backwaters of the Ucayali and Pacaya rivers I observed the use of weirs of two types:
The first was nothing more than a fence-like line of brush, palm fronds, ete. thrust into the bottom across the shoals of the quiet backwaters, forming a light barricade. They could be expected to halt rather than hold large fishes, especially Arapaima. ‘The operator of the device stationed himself in his dugout alongside the barrier. A large fish in its efforts to break through would agitate the fence sufficiently to direct the aim of his harpoon. (Fig. 33).
The second type of weir is of more stable, more permanent and effective construction. (Figs. 25 and 26). It is a pole fence of considerable height, allowing for the rise and fall of water from season to season, bound together with lianas. As the preceding it is placed across the narrower passages of backwater channels, from bank to bank. At mid-channel a tight pound, or four-sided enclosure, of similar structure, is built. At the front-center of this a gate is suspended so as to swing inward freely, not outward. During the oncoming rainy season and rising waters, larger fishes, seeking passage upstream in the usual manner, nose their way along the barrier, find the gate, enter, and are unable to escape from the pound. As needed, the inhabitants get their fresh fish by clinging barefoot to the stringers around the top of the fence, and spearing the day’s selection from above. Kahn (1931, page 88) has given us the story of the cwmaru, a fish which feeds on the explosive seeds of the plant walaba on the bank. The fish has learned to wait nearby for this food, and to recognize the popping of the seed-pods, in answer to which they come rushing to be first. The Djukas have learned to imitate the popping with a sharp handclap so as to lure the cwmaru within striking distance. A most unusual fishing method is described by Orton (page 478), and by Paez (page 416). Both had seen Indians wading and dragging canoes, lashing the water with branches. Fishes in panic would frequently make the wrong turn and leap into the canoes. Iam well prepared to believe this story from the number of times I have seen fishes leap inboard when disturbed by the ordinary paddling movement. Fishing in holes with the bare hands is sometimes done, as I had caught bullheads in boyhood; this is mentioned in a previous section, concerning the taking of Orestias in Lake Chinchayeocha. White (Beebe, page 481, et. seq.) describes the drives of Arowona into shallow water where they could be picked up by hand. Almost as extreme a case of fishing without tackle is that described by Paez (page 153). Fishes were taken in the fresh hide from the head of an ox. To this they would cling tenaciously until pulled out of water. In my observation this occurred only in the case of Hemicetopsis (q.v.), not worth taking for food. André and others allude to the employment of dynamite in fishing. In parts of the country near enough to mining centers to make dynamite available, I found the population not more averse to its use than here at home. Many sections were found greatly depleted of fishes, and available dynamite was freely alleged as the reason. I found it a convenience at times when other methods failed, and with reluctance carried it well-packed in my saddle-bags, or baggage. Many authors describe at more or less length the use of poisons of various