Amazon with Bruce Parry (2008) s01e04 Episode Script
Part 4
I'm deep in the Brazilian Amazon.
I think you can safely say that this is the wet season.
Rainwater pours into the rivers, flooding vast areas of this great forest and creating one of the richest natural landscapes on earth.
It's the most extraordinary place.
My God! I'm on my way to live with the Ribeirinhos, the river people.
Meu nome e Bruce.
These are the descendants of early settlers and indigenous tribes and they rely on the river and the forest for their survival.
I'm off again on the hunt for pirarucu.
This is fishing.
They understand this place better than anyone.
(GULPS) He's calling for caiman.
And quite distressingly, they're calling back.
Now their unique knowledge may offer a lifeline for the future of the Amazon.
(WHISTLING) (SHOUTING) I'm leaving Tabatinga, a logging town on the borders of Brazil, Peru and Columbia.
So far on my journey, I've trekked with llamas, been in canoes, rafts, airplanes, buses, all sorts of transport, but for the next month I'm gonna be almost exclusively back on the Amazon, and what better way to start this stage of my journey than on a public cruise ship like this one.
I started out four and a half months ago at the source of the Amazon River.
I'm following its course to the sea, learning about life here from the people I meet on the way.
Now I'm heading for a beautiful nature reserve called Mamiraua.
Ah, we don't set off for another couple of hours yet, but people are already milling around, because the secret is to find your hammock space really early.
Here people are utterly dependent on the river.
It's a lifeline linking towns and cities.
It's so nice to be finally on some proper public transport, because, of course, from here on in the Amazon just gets bigger and bigger and it is the route to get anywhere.
There's no roads or anything that go any distances round here.
So you want to get anywhere, you use these and I couldn't say that I'd even been on the Amazon unless I'd experienced this, so it's really nice to finally be here.
With very few roads through the dense jungle, tonnes of Peruvian and Columbian goods bound for Brazil and beyond are transported by river through this border town.
(HORN) Thousands of people travel like this every day.
The distances are enormous, it can take days getting to your destination.
We're all packed in like sardines, so you soon get to know your neighbours.
Si? Oh It's a very sociable form of transport, and a great way to see the Amazon.
There's not much to do, but lie in your hammock and watch the jungle slide slowly by.
One of the troubles with being in the border lands, especially between Brazil, Peru and Columbia is that any movement down the river here, you're gonna be subject to a fair bit of searching.
These guys here have been going through every single bag on this boat.
This is a major trade route from Peru and Columbia, so cocaine trafficking is rife.
The Brazilian Federal Police have posts along the river where they stop and check every vessel that passes through.
They turn the place over, searching every bag and box and it looks like they've found something.
They've just taken a guy off here, and I know that on the boat just before they found a bloke with 15 kilograms of cocaine.
Just been chatting to one of the policemen, they don't really want to show their face on camera, but what they did tell me was, for the last four months, every single boat like this that's come down this stretch of the Amazon they've found contraband, mostly cocaine.
And when you think this is the largest route access out, leaving Colombia and Peru, heading out towards the Atlantic, it's no surprise really.
Over 85% of the world's cocaine is produced in Colombia and Peru, hundreds of tonnes every year, and a lot of it is smuggled down the Amazon by boat.
How did you see this? The weight.
- The weight of the bag? - Look here.
Oh.
Wow! Here and here.
How much do you think all of this is? We really don't know, it's about two.
- Two kilograms? - Two kilograms.
About two.
OK, and if this becomes a prosecution and in Brazilian law for two kilograms of trafficking, what can somebody expect to get as a penalty? From five to 15.
Five to 15 years? We can prove it's cocaine.
You have the chemicals, yeah? - If it gets blue it's cocaine.
- Sure.
You want to see? Ah.
It's cocaine.
No doubt, it's cocaine.
The cocaine trade dominates the west of the Amazon.
I've seen it being processed in the hills of Peru and now being smuggled along the rivers of Brazil.
My next stop is one of the most interesting places in the Amazon Basin, the Mamiraua Nature Reserve.
It's a huge protected area, more than twice the size of Wales.
Every year, during the rainy season the rivers burst their banks, flooding a vast area.
This flooded forest is home to some of the Amazon's most amazing species.
But it's also the location for a pioneering experiment, a way to balance the needs of the environment and the people who live here.
Already the forest here looks really different to anything I've seen before and I am now actually within the Mamiraua Reserve, and the first village that I'm gonna go and visit is one of the larger fishing communities it's called Jarua.
There I hope to meet the president so that I can get permission to stay in this area.
More than 20 million people live in the Amazon Basin.
Most depend on the river and the forest for survival and overfishing and overhunting is decimating wildlife in many areas.
I'm about to meet people who are trying to find a way to live sustainably.
If they succeed they could help to protect wildlife across the whole Amazon.
Wooh! Cool! What a great looking place.
We've just come down the whole length of the village, everyone's just sitting in their doorways, like this line of houses, all of them on stilts and now I've just got to go and find Lourdes, who's the community leader here.
The people here are known as Ribeirinhos, the river people.
They're the descendants of early settlers and indigenous tribes and their lives are shaped by the ebb and flow of the Amazon.
- Todo bem? - Todo bem.
Donde esta Dona Lourdes? (SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) Ah, OK.
Dona Lourdes? As the flood waters rise, the villagers will soon have to use canoes to visit their next-door neighbours.
Meu nome es Bruce.
Dona Lourdes is the president of Jarua Village.
- Todo bem.
- Todo bem.
She's arranged for me to spend some time with her son,Jorge, or Tapioca as he's known.
Tapioca is a fisherman, the best for miles around.
He's spent his life fishing in the flooded forest and knows this place better than anyone.
Tapioca, what's the biggest reason your nets here get destroyed? Really? Caiman are closely related to American alligators.
They can grow up to nine feet long and weigh up to 200 kilograms.
It's illegal to hunt them commercially within the reserve, but people do and use their fatty meat as bait to catch catfish.
(LAUGHS) Yeah, you can feel the difference.
That is a bit of hardwood! That is heavy.
Much of the hunting and fishing here is done with harpoons like this.
Hardcore bit of kit.
Wow! For decades, fishermen like Tapioca have made their money supplying fish for the rapidly growing cities of Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
But they could never supply enough and the fish populations of the flooded forest were crashing.
The Ribeirinhos'livelihood was threatened and there was a risk that some species would disappear from here for ever.
Between this open lake here and all the other secret hidden lakes further beyond, the only way to really get there through all this flooded forest is in these tiny little canoes.
This is where the fun starts.
OK.
Tapioca has spent much of his life canoeing through this forest.
We're actually paddling close to the forest canopy, which for the rest of the year is nearly 50 feet above the ground.
Now animals like sloths and howler monkeys that normally live high above the forest floor are only feet away from the water.
It's the most extraordinary place.
I've been in mangroves, swamps, and different types of watery forests before, but never like this, this is just like a normal rainforest, tropical forest, but just flooded and as a result just has this really sort of ethereal feel to it.
The flooded forest is a magical place.
This unique ecosystem supports a dazzling array of wildlife.
400 species of bird, and at least 45 kinds of mammal.
Rare pink river dolphins weave between the trees and giant otters play amongst the flooded branches.
The water teems with countless species of fish.
I can't believe it! Literally, it's only a minute since we tied up the net and we're just going back along its length and here we have two fish already.
Pirarucu.
Pirarucu is the name for the biggest species of freshwater fish that you'll find here in the Amazon.
And it's one of the things that I know that he is a specialist at.
And we were just sat here pulling these fish out and he heard one! Can you imagine hearing fish? This guy, unreal.
20 years ago, hunting and overfishing were posing such a threat to the environment here that something had to change and Mamiraua was designated a reserve.
In Brazil, people weren't normally allowed to live in a conservation area, but here a revolutionary approach was adopted.
The idea was to form an alliance between the conservationists, who were concerned about the wildlife and the environment and the Ribeirinhos who needed to make a living here.
The Ribeirinhos would use their unique river knowledge to collect data for the scientists.
The scientists in turn would teach the Ribeirinhos how to fish in a sustainable way.
Apparently the rain's gonna come, so Tapioca's asked if I can come and help this gentleman - I think it's his brother-in-law - put the roof on his house.
I'm only here for a week, but I want to earn my keep.
To make a roof like this they need as much help as possible, so everybody pitches in.
We're trying to finish it before it rains again.
Wherever I go in the world, there's always a slightly different technique, a slightly different thatch, slightly different joint.
But always effective and always great fun.
The women have collected the palm fronds from the village plantation, a short boat ride from here.
We've got to get a move on, there's a storm blowing in.
The rain better not be imminent.
Cos this house ain't gonna be done in the next hour.
We pick up the pace, it's a race against the weather, a race we were never going to win.
(THUNDER) We're in the middle of the wet season and it pours with warm heavy rain every day.
The Amazon is one of the wettest places on Earth.
Some areas average over six feet of rain a year.
It's not a good time to be without a roof.
I want to understand how the reserve operates, 228 scientists work alongside the Ribeirinhos and I'm heading out with one of them.
Robin Arias is studying caiman.
For many years they were hunted for their meat and their valuable skins and they became critically endangered, but after a hunting ban, their numbers have increased.
Tonight, Robin's gonna come out and try and spot and identify, maybe even capture some of the caimans that live in this area, but because he does that at night, which is the best way to capture them, he has to actually reconnaissance the location during daylight hours.
Si, si, si.
It's just an extraordinary place looking around cos you can see last year's sort of high water mark, the dark rings on all of these trees around.
In a couple of months or so, the water will be up to there again, so all this green will have gone, it will just be water as far as the eye can see.
At this time of year, it's hard to break through these huge banks of grass, but Robin is confident we'll find some young caiman here once it's dark.
The Ribeirinhos are experts at spotting caiman, so they can gather detailed data for his research.
With this really high-powered beam, it's actually relatively easy to spot the caiman even in the rushes, because just like a rabbit in the headlights, we can see the shine of the light coming back at us, which is where we identify them.
And then they're paralysed.
So as long as they're not scared off by the engine we can just go straight in and then with his noose, he'll just stick it round the end of their nose and hopefully stop those jaws from being too dangerous.
We're only looking forjuveniles, but these reeds will be full of large adults too.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amazing little creature, not wriggling or anything.
He's quite placid in my hands.
And just the most beautiful textured skin, especially underneath where it's really soft.
Extraordinarily beautiful, I think.
Ready.
Ouch.
- Yes? - OK.
Robin's work won't just save the caiman, it could soon help the Ribeirinhos too.
Wow.
Hey, multo buon.
Multo buon.
Once there's a clear idea of numbers, the reserve will allow the Ribeirinhos to hunt and sell caiman legally, knowing the species won't be threatened.
I've been in Jarua almost a week now, and it's nearly time for me to move on again.
But before I go, I desperately want to see one of the Amazon's most extraordinary animals, the pirarucu, one of the world's largest fresh water fish.
Tapioca has promised to find one for me.
(MIMICS CAIMAN CALL) I've been out fishing with him every day and his knowledge is astonishing.
He's calling for caiman.
And, quite distressingly, they're calling back.
Four different locations I can hear.
(MIMICS CAIMAN CALL) Tapioca used to hunt caiman illegally, but now works with the scientists to monitor the fish stocks, and he profits from the new fishing quotas they devise.
We paddle silently through the trees.
Tapioca has heard something in the forest.
A pirarucu coming up for air.
Pirarucu are perfectly adapted for this environment.
They've evolved to take gulps of air from the surface, an advantage in these murky deoxygenated waters, but it also helps the fishermen like Tapioca.
It's a perfect shot.
But it's not a pirarucu.
Suddenly something caught his eye.
And off he went.
And he threw it, must have been six, seven yards in front of him.
Not so long ago, this area was so overfished it was hard to catch anything here.
We search the forest for hours and Tapioca occasionally hears the telltale sound of the pirarucu.
But again, it's a different fish that he spears.
This time, it's a tambaqui.
We return home without a prized pirarucu but a good haul of fish.
It's the weekend and we take a well-earned rest from fishing.
Tapioca can afford to spend a couple of days at home with his family.
Christianity plays a large part in people's lives out here.
Most villages have a church, but some priests have to cover huge areas.
(THEY SPEAK PORTUGUESE) Father Volnei has travelled from Alvarães, an eight hour boat journey to get here.
He knows everyone and they're all excited to see him.
(THEY GREET EACH OTHER IN PORTUGUESE) Bruce.
Bruce, si, si, si.
Oh, my God.
Oh, you speak some English.
You speak Portuguese.
Pico.
I speak a little bit of English.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
No, I don't speak very well.
It's difficult for me.
My vocabulary is I saw your boat arrive and you on the horn, eh-eh! I like my boat.
And I see that, I see you've been saying hello to everyone in the community, you know all their names.
It's really nice.
Here, in this community, I like it, I very like it.
You know.
- It's one of your favourites.
Fantastic.
- I like fishing.
Sure, sure.
Me too.
I've been trying with my friend Tapioca but I like to eat crocodile.
(THEY LAUGH) (SINGING) Most of the village heads to the church.
Today, the father will be baptising two of the children.
(BABY CRIES) This village is a mixture of Protestant and Catholic, but everyone comes to church when Father Volnei is here.
Dona Lourdes has really kindly invited Tapioca and myself to Sunday lunch.
Tapioca's house is only five hundred yards down there but he goes, ''I don't like walking, I think we'll take the boat.
'' (LAUGHING) So here we are.
BRUCE: Nice to see you again.
Muito obrigado por comer.
Si, si, si, si, si, si.
Yeah, yeah I know.
I don't know if we're early.
If we are, we can help you.
We'd love to.
- What are the different fish here? - Pirarucu.
- Pirarucu? - Yeah.
My Lord! And this one? Sharon.
This is pirarucu.
The famous, elusive fish.
Are you sure it's escaping me, or is it escaping the fisherman? The people of Jarua took a risk when they agreed to work with the reserve, but some villages in Mamiraua weren't so convinced.
They've been through some hard times and they've also had to make some sacrifices in order to get today what they feel is a really happy lifestyle that they're really proud of.
And that's really the word, that they are all proud, they've all bought into it.
It's a cooperative, really, there isn't a single leader who's selling off all their fish to some fish farm down the road and getting rich individually.
It's all about everyone being together, everyone seeing the benefit together and everyone wanting to tell others.
The reserve has worked well for Tapioca and the people of Jarua.
But it's time for me to move on.
Mamiraua is huge.
There are more than 11,000 people living in hundreds of small communities scattered over a vast area.
Life in the more remote parts of the reserve is very different.
I'm on my way to the village of San Francisco do Boia, a day's boat ride away.
This tiny Ribeirinhos village is perched between the forest and the river and has yet to be accepted into the sustainable fishing programme.
The most noticeable difference between here and the village I was at previously, is that most of these houses seem to be floating.
Really feels different and looks different straight away.
I'm going to stay in one of these floating houses with Branco, his wife Lenilda and their three children.
Obrigado, obrigado.
Hello.
Bruce.
Branco.
Hola, Branco.
Oh, my God.
Obrigado.
Obrigado.
(LAUGHING) I'm right at home already.
What's your name? - WOMAN: Alessandro.
- Bruce.
Nice to meet you.
Bruce, hello, hi.
Carla, Alessandro, y? Benioto.
Hi, guys.
OK lovely, lovely.
Ah, you've got a cat.
BRUCE: Wow.
I've arrived at the busiest time of year.
The river is rising daily and everyone's rushing to harvest their crops before the fields are flooded.
Manioc is the staple foodstuff round here, a starchy root vegetable that's rich in carbohydrate.
It's crucial to get the timing of the harvest right or you risk losing the whole crop.
That really is a good reason to pull up all of your manioc.
This place will be completely flooded in a week.
Everything gone, so although they have all this great soil and sort of a lovely alluvial plain that they can plant this stuff, if they don't get it out now, it's lost for the season.
In San Francisco, they don't grow enough manioc to sell.
Their harvest will be just enough for Branco and his family for the coming year.
For some reason, I can only ever pull it when he gives me that last little tug.
The top of the plant is cut off, and the tubers we're pulling out will eventually be taken back to the village and processed.
It's back-breaking work.
Branco's made the decision and I can't say I'm against it, that it's suddenly become a little bit too hot.
OK, perfecto.
So we're just gonna cover up the manioc we've already pulled up to stop it drying out, and come back this evening.
(SIGHS) Hard work, man.
Branco roasts the manioc for many hours.
Lenilda's prepared the family meal, but everyone seems a bit quiet, a bit distracted.
It was funny, we were all sitting down a minute ago and I was like, you know, ''What are you gonna do later? What's your plan?'' And they're all looking a bit sheepish and I could tell that something wasn't quite right.
I said, ''Well, what's up, what's up?'' And they're like, ''Well, to be honest, ''Brazil's playing football ''and that's what we really want to do.
We want to get the TV on.
'' So I was like ''Well, come on then, let's do it.
'' So before I knew it, they all ran around, genny's been started, TV's on next door.
No beer, unfortunately, but I'm off to watch the match.
If there's one thing that unites Brazilians, young, old, male or female, it's football.
Brazil won, one nil.
And when the match is finished, Branco tells me we're heading out on the water.
Tonight, we're hunting caiman, but this time, it's not for science, it's for cash.
In actual fact, caiman hunting here is illegal.
But they're not gonna sell the meat or the skin of the caiman, they're gonna use it as bait to catch other fish.
It's the only source of income this community has at this time of year.
I've been hunting many times but it's normally to put food on the table.
I don't want to judge Branco but I've got mixed feelings about this trip.
He scans the reeds for the telltale glint of eyes in exactly the same way Robin did, but this time, we're looking for fully grown adults.
So still at the moment.
I can just imagine when we finally steal our way in and set the harpoon off, it's going to be a very different story when the whole scene erupts around us.
Not quite sure if I'm looking forward to it or not.
Branco does this two or three times a week.
It doesn't take long before we spot one high up on the bank.
(SPLASHING) I couldn't make it out as clearly as I'd liked because we went straight for it.
And it was on the bank, can you believe it? And he just stood up and threw it like a spear, the harpoon, and here we have it.
My God! Amazing looking creature.
Just the most extraordinary hunting, killing machine, hardly changed since dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Sixty million years it's been without evolving, because it's just so perfectly in tune with what it has to do.
What a horrible way to go.
It's still moving.
(EXHALES) I get to sit in the bit where the croc is.
The caiman.
That's extraordinary.
Not really sure what to say about that.
I've hunted crocodiles before, actually, not caiman but crocodile and very similar, but for some reason, this just seemed a bit just slightly different.
Just a bit more Quite horrific.
Such an extraordinary beast, and, uh Quite sad, actually.
In other parts of the Amazon, caiman meat is considered a delicacy, but the villagers here never eat it.
And tomorrow, this will be nothing more than bait.
(EXHALES) That was a night and a half.
Leave it out here.
Scare the cat in the morning.
The next morning, the dead caiman is taken to the riverbank.
Branco is not the only person who hunts caiman round here.
It's shocking to see so many of these magnificent creatures lying dead by the river, but life here is tough and the family needs cash.
The way these huge carcasses are used is unlike anything I've seen before.
The aim is to use the dead caiman to catch a type of catfish they call piracatinga.
The kids just running around while we chop up a caiman.
We slice off the caiman's fat.
This will be used as bait to draw in the catfish.
Within seconds, the water is teeming with piracatinga.
Then, you just grab the fish behind the gills and throw them into the open pen.
Easier said than done.
(CHILDREN LAUGH) Mine's not working.
(BRUCE LAUGHS) Raimundo and his brothers are true experts - they catch hundreds of kilos of piracatinga every week.
I'm just grabbing them too far back and they just slip forwards.
It's a classic mistake and I just haven't got the skill right to go to the front and then grab them.
And the couple that I have got have been quite small and the big ones just have been wriggling free.
It's a real art, as you might expect.
Amazing how much waste.
These huge chunks of meat are being just tossed to the side.
They're not needed.
It's just the fat that they like by the looks of it.
And the irony is that I've eaten caiman and crocodile before and I really quite like the meat and I hate catfish! They're throwing away all this meat to catch these.
And none of the people here eat these fish either.
They sell the catch on and they're eventually exported to Colombia.
It's time to see the fruits of our labour.
Even with me getting in the way, Branco reckons we caught about three hundred kilograms of piracatinga.
Fishing like this seems pretty poor business.
They only get 30p for each kilo of fish.
At the moment, we're selling this fish here for about one real a kilogram.
Now, at the moment, the only caiman that's sold legally goes for about 45 reais a kilogram.
Now, if there was a management programme here, these caiman could actually be sold on constructively and make this community a lot more money.
For Branco and the people of San Francisco de Boia, becoming part of the Mamiraua project would guarantee a decent income without endangering species.
But until that does happen, communities like this will continue hunting caiman to catch piracatinga in order to make some sort of living.
The family has run out of wood to dry the manioc.
Everyone's heading out to replenish their stock.
This area of forest has the wood we're after, but in a few weeks time, it will be underwater and out of reach for many months.
Wood collecting in the reserve is sustainable.
All the wood taken here is already dead.
Everyone's got a job to do, no matter how small.
Clara's job is to clear the path and every time we come past, she's cleared a bit but she's also in the way or made more dead wood, so everyone's teasing her.
It's really funny.
(LAUGHTER) Life here may be hard but it can be fun too.
(LAUGHTER) How all these amazing kids have got all their fingers and aren't broken arms and legs and heads I don't know, cos there's so many near accidents here, but that's what makes them tough.
And they are aware of what's going on around them, and they're strong and fit and agile and they take the knocks.
And I love them.
We've got plenty of wood to dry the family's manioc.
On the way back, our boat starts to run out of petrol so we're given a tow.
This is a beautiful area of forest.
But it's not an easy place to live.
River people need to work hard and look out for each other to survive here.
To be a part of the Mamiraua conservation scheme and to be able to catch and sell fish legally, the villagers have to prove that they have protected an area from being over-fished for a number of years.
During my stay, Branco took me to a pirarucu lake where they've been doing just that.
If we catch a pirarucu, it will feed the whole village.
If you live here, you're allowed to fish for anything, even protected species, as long as it's to eat and not to sell.
I'm off again on the hunt for pirarucu.
This lake is much more isolated.
We've got a much harderjob getting to it.
Branco paddles through the shallow lake, looking and listening for a pirarucu coming to the surface to breathe.
Then, he strikes.
Wow, that is a big fish.
Good shot.
My God.
The fish is strong enough to pull our canoe around.
Branco slowly hauls it in.
Oh, my God.
Why didn't it swim away? (BRUCE LAUGHS) This is fishing! (SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) Oh, you're gonna kill it with this? OK.
BRUCE: Cansado.
BRUCE: OK.
Yeah, got it.
Oh, you found some Oh, you just hold it in the eye.
(SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) (KNOCKING) (FISH GURGLES DEEPLY) That is a noise! I've never had a fishing experience like this.
I tell you that much.
Obrigado.
This weighs a ton, even supported in the water, but it's interesting because at this time of year, this community would never come out and fish for these.
Firstly, because it's really hard with the water being so high, but secondly, they're trying to conserve it, but because also this is the hardest time of year for them, because they have to get all their manioc out and they have to prepare it so it doesn't go off for the whole year.
Everybody is so busy doing that, that people aren't fishing as much as they normally would for the small stuff.
So they come out to get a monster which will feed the entire community.
So, pull it on? (BRUCE SPLUTTERS AND LAUGHS) My God, you think, this, Branco reckons, is a 20 kilogram specimen.
They can grow up to 200 kilograms.
Ten times this size, ten times! Branco, if you get a big, big, big one, how do you get it into the boat? Muito obrigado.
Last year, they counted 500 pirarucu in this lake, and they have another similar lake nearby.
What they desperately need is permission to sell the meat commercially.
That would provide a stable income for the village.
Until that happens, they still struggle to make a living.
The pirarucu will be cut up and shared amongst the villagers.
It's just like skinning and gutting a huge mammal, it's not just a question of brushing off the scales, they literally are taking the whole of the skin off.
And here we go for the main incision.
OK, we're gonna weigh it.
19.
He said it was a 20kg fish, and, uh the bit that counts has come in at 19.
That's not bad, is it? The villagers now recognise that the new controls on fishing set by the reserve will be good in the long term and will preserve this area for their children.
Sadly, it's time for me to say goodbye.
I can honestly say this is one of the happiest times I've had in the community in my whole journey so far.
It's such an amazing group of people.
Really sad to bid them farewell, but the time has come.
Branco.
Senor, amigo.
Muito, muito obrigado.
- Obrigado.
- Adios.
(BRANCO SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) Been amazing.
Yeah.
Ah, goodbye, everyone.
Good luck, my friend.
Thanks everyone.
Stay good, yeah, thank you.
They've got so much on their hands at the moment and I really, really wish them all the best.
The good news is that during our time here, the institute have given a really clear indication that if things go well, they could be part of the management programme within a few months, which is just extraordinarily good news.
And so, I hope that goes ahead and that will make a huge difference to the lives of everyone living here.
So, I wish them well.
Yay! Adios! It's good to leave on a positive note.
By combining the Ribeirinhos'traditional knowledge with 2 1st century science, Mamiraua is improving people's lives and protecting wildlife.
It's a successful model that could be applied throughout the whole Amazon basin.
I continue my journey down river with renewed hope.
I'm back on the water heading towards the region's biggest city, Manaus.
The river is vast here and about to get much bigger.
This is the meeting of the waters where the black Rio Negro flowing from the north meets the cloudy Rio Solimoes, rich with sediments from the Andes.
Together, they form the Amazon, the greatest river on earth.
It's pretty unbelievable when you look around, and when I think back, all those months ago, to when I was at Nevado Mismi at a tiny trickle of water that was the source of the Amazon.
And then I check out this, it's just unbelievable.
What a journey I have had.
From here on in, it's only ever known as the Rio Amazonas.
I've been through all sorts of different names, seen all sorts of different terrains, but now, really, I can feel the mighty strength of this river.
And when you think that the Rio Negro here probably one of the world's, I don't know, fifth or sixth largest rivers, is just a tributary to the Amazon.
Now, if that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does.
The next stage of my journey, I'm going in search of the riches of the Amazon.
I'll be partying with the millionaires of Manaus and joining the rush for new money in one of Brazil's illegal gold mines.
I'm not too sure what to expect so far, but the phrase Wild West comes to mind.
And I'll meet some people who are trying to value the Amazon in a revolutionary way.
It really is without a doubt the best view of the forest I have ever, ever had.
If you want to know more, visit our website, bbc.
co.
uk/amazon
I think you can safely say that this is the wet season.
Rainwater pours into the rivers, flooding vast areas of this great forest and creating one of the richest natural landscapes on earth.
It's the most extraordinary place.
My God! I'm on my way to live with the Ribeirinhos, the river people.
Meu nome e Bruce.
These are the descendants of early settlers and indigenous tribes and they rely on the river and the forest for their survival.
I'm off again on the hunt for pirarucu.
This is fishing.
They understand this place better than anyone.
(GULPS) He's calling for caiman.
And quite distressingly, they're calling back.
Now their unique knowledge may offer a lifeline for the future of the Amazon.
(WHISTLING) (SHOUTING) I'm leaving Tabatinga, a logging town on the borders of Brazil, Peru and Columbia.
So far on my journey, I've trekked with llamas, been in canoes, rafts, airplanes, buses, all sorts of transport, but for the next month I'm gonna be almost exclusively back on the Amazon, and what better way to start this stage of my journey than on a public cruise ship like this one.
I started out four and a half months ago at the source of the Amazon River.
I'm following its course to the sea, learning about life here from the people I meet on the way.
Now I'm heading for a beautiful nature reserve called Mamiraua.
Ah, we don't set off for another couple of hours yet, but people are already milling around, because the secret is to find your hammock space really early.
Here people are utterly dependent on the river.
It's a lifeline linking towns and cities.
It's so nice to be finally on some proper public transport, because, of course, from here on in the Amazon just gets bigger and bigger and it is the route to get anywhere.
There's no roads or anything that go any distances round here.
So you want to get anywhere, you use these and I couldn't say that I'd even been on the Amazon unless I'd experienced this, so it's really nice to finally be here.
With very few roads through the dense jungle, tonnes of Peruvian and Columbian goods bound for Brazil and beyond are transported by river through this border town.
(HORN) Thousands of people travel like this every day.
The distances are enormous, it can take days getting to your destination.
We're all packed in like sardines, so you soon get to know your neighbours.
Si? Oh It's a very sociable form of transport, and a great way to see the Amazon.
There's not much to do, but lie in your hammock and watch the jungle slide slowly by.
One of the troubles with being in the border lands, especially between Brazil, Peru and Columbia is that any movement down the river here, you're gonna be subject to a fair bit of searching.
These guys here have been going through every single bag on this boat.
This is a major trade route from Peru and Columbia, so cocaine trafficking is rife.
The Brazilian Federal Police have posts along the river where they stop and check every vessel that passes through.
They turn the place over, searching every bag and box and it looks like they've found something.
They've just taken a guy off here, and I know that on the boat just before they found a bloke with 15 kilograms of cocaine.
Just been chatting to one of the policemen, they don't really want to show their face on camera, but what they did tell me was, for the last four months, every single boat like this that's come down this stretch of the Amazon they've found contraband, mostly cocaine.
And when you think this is the largest route access out, leaving Colombia and Peru, heading out towards the Atlantic, it's no surprise really.
Over 85% of the world's cocaine is produced in Colombia and Peru, hundreds of tonnes every year, and a lot of it is smuggled down the Amazon by boat.
How did you see this? The weight.
- The weight of the bag? - Look here.
Oh.
Wow! Here and here.
How much do you think all of this is? We really don't know, it's about two.
- Two kilograms? - Two kilograms.
About two.
OK, and if this becomes a prosecution and in Brazilian law for two kilograms of trafficking, what can somebody expect to get as a penalty? From five to 15.
Five to 15 years? We can prove it's cocaine.
You have the chemicals, yeah? - If it gets blue it's cocaine.
- Sure.
You want to see? Ah.
It's cocaine.
No doubt, it's cocaine.
The cocaine trade dominates the west of the Amazon.
I've seen it being processed in the hills of Peru and now being smuggled along the rivers of Brazil.
My next stop is one of the most interesting places in the Amazon Basin, the Mamiraua Nature Reserve.
It's a huge protected area, more than twice the size of Wales.
Every year, during the rainy season the rivers burst their banks, flooding a vast area.
This flooded forest is home to some of the Amazon's most amazing species.
But it's also the location for a pioneering experiment, a way to balance the needs of the environment and the people who live here.
Already the forest here looks really different to anything I've seen before and I am now actually within the Mamiraua Reserve, and the first village that I'm gonna go and visit is one of the larger fishing communities it's called Jarua.
There I hope to meet the president so that I can get permission to stay in this area.
More than 20 million people live in the Amazon Basin.
Most depend on the river and the forest for survival and overfishing and overhunting is decimating wildlife in many areas.
I'm about to meet people who are trying to find a way to live sustainably.
If they succeed they could help to protect wildlife across the whole Amazon.
Wooh! Cool! What a great looking place.
We've just come down the whole length of the village, everyone's just sitting in their doorways, like this line of houses, all of them on stilts and now I've just got to go and find Lourdes, who's the community leader here.
The people here are known as Ribeirinhos, the river people.
They're the descendants of early settlers and indigenous tribes and their lives are shaped by the ebb and flow of the Amazon.
- Todo bem? - Todo bem.
Donde esta Dona Lourdes? (SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) Ah, OK.
Dona Lourdes? As the flood waters rise, the villagers will soon have to use canoes to visit their next-door neighbours.
Meu nome es Bruce.
Dona Lourdes is the president of Jarua Village.
- Todo bem.
- Todo bem.
She's arranged for me to spend some time with her son,Jorge, or Tapioca as he's known.
Tapioca is a fisherman, the best for miles around.
He's spent his life fishing in the flooded forest and knows this place better than anyone.
Tapioca, what's the biggest reason your nets here get destroyed? Really? Caiman are closely related to American alligators.
They can grow up to nine feet long and weigh up to 200 kilograms.
It's illegal to hunt them commercially within the reserve, but people do and use their fatty meat as bait to catch catfish.
(LAUGHS) Yeah, you can feel the difference.
That is a bit of hardwood! That is heavy.
Much of the hunting and fishing here is done with harpoons like this.
Hardcore bit of kit.
Wow! For decades, fishermen like Tapioca have made their money supplying fish for the rapidly growing cities of Brazil, Colombia and Peru.
But they could never supply enough and the fish populations of the flooded forest were crashing.
The Ribeirinhos'livelihood was threatened and there was a risk that some species would disappear from here for ever.
Between this open lake here and all the other secret hidden lakes further beyond, the only way to really get there through all this flooded forest is in these tiny little canoes.
This is where the fun starts.
OK.
Tapioca has spent much of his life canoeing through this forest.
We're actually paddling close to the forest canopy, which for the rest of the year is nearly 50 feet above the ground.
Now animals like sloths and howler monkeys that normally live high above the forest floor are only feet away from the water.
It's the most extraordinary place.
I've been in mangroves, swamps, and different types of watery forests before, but never like this, this is just like a normal rainforest, tropical forest, but just flooded and as a result just has this really sort of ethereal feel to it.
The flooded forest is a magical place.
This unique ecosystem supports a dazzling array of wildlife.
400 species of bird, and at least 45 kinds of mammal.
Rare pink river dolphins weave between the trees and giant otters play amongst the flooded branches.
The water teems with countless species of fish.
I can't believe it! Literally, it's only a minute since we tied up the net and we're just going back along its length and here we have two fish already.
Pirarucu.
Pirarucu is the name for the biggest species of freshwater fish that you'll find here in the Amazon.
And it's one of the things that I know that he is a specialist at.
And we were just sat here pulling these fish out and he heard one! Can you imagine hearing fish? This guy, unreal.
20 years ago, hunting and overfishing were posing such a threat to the environment here that something had to change and Mamiraua was designated a reserve.
In Brazil, people weren't normally allowed to live in a conservation area, but here a revolutionary approach was adopted.
The idea was to form an alliance between the conservationists, who were concerned about the wildlife and the environment and the Ribeirinhos who needed to make a living here.
The Ribeirinhos would use their unique river knowledge to collect data for the scientists.
The scientists in turn would teach the Ribeirinhos how to fish in a sustainable way.
Apparently the rain's gonna come, so Tapioca's asked if I can come and help this gentleman - I think it's his brother-in-law - put the roof on his house.
I'm only here for a week, but I want to earn my keep.
To make a roof like this they need as much help as possible, so everybody pitches in.
We're trying to finish it before it rains again.
Wherever I go in the world, there's always a slightly different technique, a slightly different thatch, slightly different joint.
But always effective and always great fun.
The women have collected the palm fronds from the village plantation, a short boat ride from here.
We've got to get a move on, there's a storm blowing in.
The rain better not be imminent.
Cos this house ain't gonna be done in the next hour.
We pick up the pace, it's a race against the weather, a race we were never going to win.
(THUNDER) We're in the middle of the wet season and it pours with warm heavy rain every day.
The Amazon is one of the wettest places on Earth.
Some areas average over six feet of rain a year.
It's not a good time to be without a roof.
I want to understand how the reserve operates, 228 scientists work alongside the Ribeirinhos and I'm heading out with one of them.
Robin Arias is studying caiman.
For many years they were hunted for their meat and their valuable skins and they became critically endangered, but after a hunting ban, their numbers have increased.
Tonight, Robin's gonna come out and try and spot and identify, maybe even capture some of the caimans that live in this area, but because he does that at night, which is the best way to capture them, he has to actually reconnaissance the location during daylight hours.
Si, si, si.
It's just an extraordinary place looking around cos you can see last year's sort of high water mark, the dark rings on all of these trees around.
In a couple of months or so, the water will be up to there again, so all this green will have gone, it will just be water as far as the eye can see.
At this time of year, it's hard to break through these huge banks of grass, but Robin is confident we'll find some young caiman here once it's dark.
The Ribeirinhos are experts at spotting caiman, so they can gather detailed data for his research.
With this really high-powered beam, it's actually relatively easy to spot the caiman even in the rushes, because just like a rabbit in the headlights, we can see the shine of the light coming back at us, which is where we identify them.
And then they're paralysed.
So as long as they're not scared off by the engine we can just go straight in and then with his noose, he'll just stick it round the end of their nose and hopefully stop those jaws from being too dangerous.
We're only looking forjuveniles, but these reeds will be full of large adults too.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amazing little creature, not wriggling or anything.
He's quite placid in my hands.
And just the most beautiful textured skin, especially underneath where it's really soft.
Extraordinarily beautiful, I think.
Ready.
Ouch.
- Yes? - OK.
Robin's work won't just save the caiman, it could soon help the Ribeirinhos too.
Wow.
Hey, multo buon.
Multo buon.
Once there's a clear idea of numbers, the reserve will allow the Ribeirinhos to hunt and sell caiman legally, knowing the species won't be threatened.
I've been in Jarua almost a week now, and it's nearly time for me to move on again.
But before I go, I desperately want to see one of the Amazon's most extraordinary animals, the pirarucu, one of the world's largest fresh water fish.
Tapioca has promised to find one for me.
(MIMICS CAIMAN CALL) I've been out fishing with him every day and his knowledge is astonishing.
He's calling for caiman.
And, quite distressingly, they're calling back.
Four different locations I can hear.
(MIMICS CAIMAN CALL) Tapioca used to hunt caiman illegally, but now works with the scientists to monitor the fish stocks, and he profits from the new fishing quotas they devise.
We paddle silently through the trees.
Tapioca has heard something in the forest.
A pirarucu coming up for air.
Pirarucu are perfectly adapted for this environment.
They've evolved to take gulps of air from the surface, an advantage in these murky deoxygenated waters, but it also helps the fishermen like Tapioca.
It's a perfect shot.
But it's not a pirarucu.
Suddenly something caught his eye.
And off he went.
And he threw it, must have been six, seven yards in front of him.
Not so long ago, this area was so overfished it was hard to catch anything here.
We search the forest for hours and Tapioca occasionally hears the telltale sound of the pirarucu.
But again, it's a different fish that he spears.
This time, it's a tambaqui.
We return home without a prized pirarucu but a good haul of fish.
It's the weekend and we take a well-earned rest from fishing.
Tapioca can afford to spend a couple of days at home with his family.
Christianity plays a large part in people's lives out here.
Most villages have a church, but some priests have to cover huge areas.
(THEY SPEAK PORTUGUESE) Father Volnei has travelled from Alvarães, an eight hour boat journey to get here.
He knows everyone and they're all excited to see him.
(THEY GREET EACH OTHER IN PORTUGUESE) Bruce.
Bruce, si, si, si.
Oh, my God.
Oh, you speak some English.
You speak Portuguese.
Pico.
I speak a little bit of English.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
No, I don't speak very well.
It's difficult for me.
My vocabulary is I saw your boat arrive and you on the horn, eh-eh! I like my boat.
And I see that, I see you've been saying hello to everyone in the community, you know all their names.
It's really nice.
Here, in this community, I like it, I very like it.
You know.
- It's one of your favourites.
Fantastic.
- I like fishing.
Sure, sure.
Me too.
I've been trying with my friend Tapioca but I like to eat crocodile.
(THEY LAUGH) (SINGING) Most of the village heads to the church.
Today, the father will be baptising two of the children.
(BABY CRIES) This village is a mixture of Protestant and Catholic, but everyone comes to church when Father Volnei is here.
Dona Lourdes has really kindly invited Tapioca and myself to Sunday lunch.
Tapioca's house is only five hundred yards down there but he goes, ''I don't like walking, I think we'll take the boat.
'' (LAUGHING) So here we are.
BRUCE: Nice to see you again.
Muito obrigado por comer.
Si, si, si, si, si, si.
Yeah, yeah I know.
I don't know if we're early.
If we are, we can help you.
We'd love to.
- What are the different fish here? - Pirarucu.
- Pirarucu? - Yeah.
My Lord! And this one? Sharon.
This is pirarucu.
The famous, elusive fish.
Are you sure it's escaping me, or is it escaping the fisherman? The people of Jarua took a risk when they agreed to work with the reserve, but some villages in Mamiraua weren't so convinced.
They've been through some hard times and they've also had to make some sacrifices in order to get today what they feel is a really happy lifestyle that they're really proud of.
And that's really the word, that they are all proud, they've all bought into it.
It's a cooperative, really, there isn't a single leader who's selling off all their fish to some fish farm down the road and getting rich individually.
It's all about everyone being together, everyone seeing the benefit together and everyone wanting to tell others.
The reserve has worked well for Tapioca and the people of Jarua.
But it's time for me to move on.
Mamiraua is huge.
There are more than 11,000 people living in hundreds of small communities scattered over a vast area.
Life in the more remote parts of the reserve is very different.
I'm on my way to the village of San Francisco do Boia, a day's boat ride away.
This tiny Ribeirinhos village is perched between the forest and the river and has yet to be accepted into the sustainable fishing programme.
The most noticeable difference between here and the village I was at previously, is that most of these houses seem to be floating.
Really feels different and looks different straight away.
I'm going to stay in one of these floating houses with Branco, his wife Lenilda and their three children.
Obrigado, obrigado.
Hello.
Bruce.
Branco.
Hola, Branco.
Oh, my God.
Obrigado.
Obrigado.
(LAUGHING) I'm right at home already.
What's your name? - WOMAN: Alessandro.
- Bruce.
Nice to meet you.
Bruce, hello, hi.
Carla, Alessandro, y? Benioto.
Hi, guys.
OK lovely, lovely.
Ah, you've got a cat.
BRUCE: Wow.
I've arrived at the busiest time of year.
The river is rising daily and everyone's rushing to harvest their crops before the fields are flooded.
Manioc is the staple foodstuff round here, a starchy root vegetable that's rich in carbohydrate.
It's crucial to get the timing of the harvest right or you risk losing the whole crop.
That really is a good reason to pull up all of your manioc.
This place will be completely flooded in a week.
Everything gone, so although they have all this great soil and sort of a lovely alluvial plain that they can plant this stuff, if they don't get it out now, it's lost for the season.
In San Francisco, they don't grow enough manioc to sell.
Their harvest will be just enough for Branco and his family for the coming year.
For some reason, I can only ever pull it when he gives me that last little tug.
The top of the plant is cut off, and the tubers we're pulling out will eventually be taken back to the village and processed.
It's back-breaking work.
Branco's made the decision and I can't say I'm against it, that it's suddenly become a little bit too hot.
OK, perfecto.
So we're just gonna cover up the manioc we've already pulled up to stop it drying out, and come back this evening.
(SIGHS) Hard work, man.
Branco roasts the manioc for many hours.
Lenilda's prepared the family meal, but everyone seems a bit quiet, a bit distracted.
It was funny, we were all sitting down a minute ago and I was like, you know, ''What are you gonna do later? What's your plan?'' And they're all looking a bit sheepish and I could tell that something wasn't quite right.
I said, ''Well, what's up, what's up?'' And they're like, ''Well, to be honest, ''Brazil's playing football ''and that's what we really want to do.
We want to get the TV on.
'' So I was like ''Well, come on then, let's do it.
'' So before I knew it, they all ran around, genny's been started, TV's on next door.
No beer, unfortunately, but I'm off to watch the match.
If there's one thing that unites Brazilians, young, old, male or female, it's football.
Brazil won, one nil.
And when the match is finished, Branco tells me we're heading out on the water.
Tonight, we're hunting caiman, but this time, it's not for science, it's for cash.
In actual fact, caiman hunting here is illegal.
But they're not gonna sell the meat or the skin of the caiman, they're gonna use it as bait to catch other fish.
It's the only source of income this community has at this time of year.
I've been hunting many times but it's normally to put food on the table.
I don't want to judge Branco but I've got mixed feelings about this trip.
He scans the reeds for the telltale glint of eyes in exactly the same way Robin did, but this time, we're looking for fully grown adults.
So still at the moment.
I can just imagine when we finally steal our way in and set the harpoon off, it's going to be a very different story when the whole scene erupts around us.
Not quite sure if I'm looking forward to it or not.
Branco does this two or three times a week.
It doesn't take long before we spot one high up on the bank.
(SPLASHING) I couldn't make it out as clearly as I'd liked because we went straight for it.
And it was on the bank, can you believe it? And he just stood up and threw it like a spear, the harpoon, and here we have it.
My God! Amazing looking creature.
Just the most extraordinary hunting, killing machine, hardly changed since dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Sixty million years it's been without evolving, because it's just so perfectly in tune with what it has to do.
What a horrible way to go.
It's still moving.
(EXHALES) I get to sit in the bit where the croc is.
The caiman.
That's extraordinary.
Not really sure what to say about that.
I've hunted crocodiles before, actually, not caiman but crocodile and very similar, but for some reason, this just seemed a bit just slightly different.
Just a bit more Quite horrific.
Such an extraordinary beast, and, uh Quite sad, actually.
In other parts of the Amazon, caiman meat is considered a delicacy, but the villagers here never eat it.
And tomorrow, this will be nothing more than bait.
(EXHALES) That was a night and a half.
Leave it out here.
Scare the cat in the morning.
The next morning, the dead caiman is taken to the riverbank.
Branco is not the only person who hunts caiman round here.
It's shocking to see so many of these magnificent creatures lying dead by the river, but life here is tough and the family needs cash.
The way these huge carcasses are used is unlike anything I've seen before.
The aim is to use the dead caiman to catch a type of catfish they call piracatinga.
The kids just running around while we chop up a caiman.
We slice off the caiman's fat.
This will be used as bait to draw in the catfish.
Within seconds, the water is teeming with piracatinga.
Then, you just grab the fish behind the gills and throw them into the open pen.
Easier said than done.
(CHILDREN LAUGH) Mine's not working.
(BRUCE LAUGHS) Raimundo and his brothers are true experts - they catch hundreds of kilos of piracatinga every week.
I'm just grabbing them too far back and they just slip forwards.
It's a classic mistake and I just haven't got the skill right to go to the front and then grab them.
And the couple that I have got have been quite small and the big ones just have been wriggling free.
It's a real art, as you might expect.
Amazing how much waste.
These huge chunks of meat are being just tossed to the side.
They're not needed.
It's just the fat that they like by the looks of it.
And the irony is that I've eaten caiman and crocodile before and I really quite like the meat and I hate catfish! They're throwing away all this meat to catch these.
And none of the people here eat these fish either.
They sell the catch on and they're eventually exported to Colombia.
It's time to see the fruits of our labour.
Even with me getting in the way, Branco reckons we caught about three hundred kilograms of piracatinga.
Fishing like this seems pretty poor business.
They only get 30p for each kilo of fish.
At the moment, we're selling this fish here for about one real a kilogram.
Now, at the moment, the only caiman that's sold legally goes for about 45 reais a kilogram.
Now, if there was a management programme here, these caiman could actually be sold on constructively and make this community a lot more money.
For Branco and the people of San Francisco de Boia, becoming part of the Mamiraua project would guarantee a decent income without endangering species.
But until that does happen, communities like this will continue hunting caiman to catch piracatinga in order to make some sort of living.
The family has run out of wood to dry the manioc.
Everyone's heading out to replenish their stock.
This area of forest has the wood we're after, but in a few weeks time, it will be underwater and out of reach for many months.
Wood collecting in the reserve is sustainable.
All the wood taken here is already dead.
Everyone's got a job to do, no matter how small.
Clara's job is to clear the path and every time we come past, she's cleared a bit but she's also in the way or made more dead wood, so everyone's teasing her.
It's really funny.
(LAUGHTER) Life here may be hard but it can be fun too.
(LAUGHTER) How all these amazing kids have got all their fingers and aren't broken arms and legs and heads I don't know, cos there's so many near accidents here, but that's what makes them tough.
And they are aware of what's going on around them, and they're strong and fit and agile and they take the knocks.
And I love them.
We've got plenty of wood to dry the family's manioc.
On the way back, our boat starts to run out of petrol so we're given a tow.
This is a beautiful area of forest.
But it's not an easy place to live.
River people need to work hard and look out for each other to survive here.
To be a part of the Mamiraua conservation scheme and to be able to catch and sell fish legally, the villagers have to prove that they have protected an area from being over-fished for a number of years.
During my stay, Branco took me to a pirarucu lake where they've been doing just that.
If we catch a pirarucu, it will feed the whole village.
If you live here, you're allowed to fish for anything, even protected species, as long as it's to eat and not to sell.
I'm off again on the hunt for pirarucu.
This lake is much more isolated.
We've got a much harderjob getting to it.
Branco paddles through the shallow lake, looking and listening for a pirarucu coming to the surface to breathe.
Then, he strikes.
Wow, that is a big fish.
Good shot.
My God.
The fish is strong enough to pull our canoe around.
Branco slowly hauls it in.
Oh, my God.
Why didn't it swim away? (BRUCE LAUGHS) This is fishing! (SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) Oh, you're gonna kill it with this? OK.
BRUCE: Cansado.
BRUCE: OK.
Yeah, got it.
Oh, you found some Oh, you just hold it in the eye.
(SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) (KNOCKING) (FISH GURGLES DEEPLY) That is a noise! I've never had a fishing experience like this.
I tell you that much.
Obrigado.
This weighs a ton, even supported in the water, but it's interesting because at this time of year, this community would never come out and fish for these.
Firstly, because it's really hard with the water being so high, but secondly, they're trying to conserve it, but because also this is the hardest time of year for them, because they have to get all their manioc out and they have to prepare it so it doesn't go off for the whole year.
Everybody is so busy doing that, that people aren't fishing as much as they normally would for the small stuff.
So they come out to get a monster which will feed the entire community.
So, pull it on? (BRUCE SPLUTTERS AND LAUGHS) My God, you think, this, Branco reckons, is a 20 kilogram specimen.
They can grow up to 200 kilograms.
Ten times this size, ten times! Branco, if you get a big, big, big one, how do you get it into the boat? Muito obrigado.
Last year, they counted 500 pirarucu in this lake, and they have another similar lake nearby.
What they desperately need is permission to sell the meat commercially.
That would provide a stable income for the village.
Until that happens, they still struggle to make a living.
The pirarucu will be cut up and shared amongst the villagers.
It's just like skinning and gutting a huge mammal, it's not just a question of brushing off the scales, they literally are taking the whole of the skin off.
And here we go for the main incision.
OK, we're gonna weigh it.
19.
He said it was a 20kg fish, and, uh the bit that counts has come in at 19.
That's not bad, is it? The villagers now recognise that the new controls on fishing set by the reserve will be good in the long term and will preserve this area for their children.
Sadly, it's time for me to say goodbye.
I can honestly say this is one of the happiest times I've had in the community in my whole journey so far.
It's such an amazing group of people.
Really sad to bid them farewell, but the time has come.
Branco.
Senor, amigo.
Muito, muito obrigado.
- Obrigado.
- Adios.
(BRANCO SPEAKS PORTUGUESE) Been amazing.
Yeah.
Ah, goodbye, everyone.
Good luck, my friend.
Thanks everyone.
Stay good, yeah, thank you.
They've got so much on their hands at the moment and I really, really wish them all the best.
The good news is that during our time here, the institute have given a really clear indication that if things go well, they could be part of the management programme within a few months, which is just extraordinarily good news.
And so, I hope that goes ahead and that will make a huge difference to the lives of everyone living here.
So, I wish them well.
Yay! Adios! It's good to leave on a positive note.
By combining the Ribeirinhos'traditional knowledge with 2 1st century science, Mamiraua is improving people's lives and protecting wildlife.
It's a successful model that could be applied throughout the whole Amazon basin.
I continue my journey down river with renewed hope.
I'm back on the water heading towards the region's biggest city, Manaus.
The river is vast here and about to get much bigger.
This is the meeting of the waters where the black Rio Negro flowing from the north meets the cloudy Rio Solimoes, rich with sediments from the Andes.
Together, they form the Amazon, the greatest river on earth.
It's pretty unbelievable when you look around, and when I think back, all those months ago, to when I was at Nevado Mismi at a tiny trickle of water that was the source of the Amazon.
And then I check out this, it's just unbelievable.
What a journey I have had.
From here on in, it's only ever known as the Rio Amazonas.
I've been through all sorts of different names, seen all sorts of different terrains, but now, really, I can feel the mighty strength of this river.
And when you think that the Rio Negro here probably one of the world's, I don't know, fifth or sixth largest rivers, is just a tributary to the Amazon.
Now, if that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does.
The next stage of my journey, I'm going in search of the riches of the Amazon.
I'll be partying with the millionaires of Manaus and joining the rush for new money in one of Brazil's illegal gold mines.
I'm not too sure what to expect so far, but the phrase Wild West comes to mind.
And I'll meet some people who are trying to value the Amazon in a revolutionary way.
It really is without a doubt the best view of the forest I have ever, ever had.
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