Quantifying fish catches and fish consumption in the

Amazon Basin

Authors: Sirén, Anders, and Valbo-Jørgensen, John

Source: Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management, 25(1) : 59-71
Published By: Michigan State University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.14321/aehm.025.01.59

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 Quantifying fish catches and fish consumption in the
Amazon Basin
Anders Sirén1 and John Valbo-Jørgensen2*
Inti Anka Taripay, Puyo, Ecuador (andsir@utu.fi)
1

2
Fisheries Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla,
00153 Rome, Italy
*Corresponding author: John.Jorgensen@fao.org

The Amazon Basin is the largest in the world and for many of its inhabitants fishing is a crucially
important source of food and income. However, the benefits derived from mostly informal, part time,
seasonal, and subsistence-based activities such as fishing are largely invisible to policy-makers, and
addressing the threats to aquatic habitats, ecosystem functioning, and fisheries is frequently given low
priority in national development agendas.
To estimate the total extraction of fish in the Amazon Basin, we reviewed various publications and
databases with quantitative data related to the landings, trade, and consumption of fish. We estimated the
total landings to be between 422,000 and 473,000 t yr-1 in live weight, near to previous estimates. Almost
75%, however, represented landings in the Brazilian part of the basin, and there is a very large margin of
uncertainty given that, among other issues, there are no recent official statistics on commercial landings.
Conversely, landings in Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador seem to be considerably higher than previously
thought. In all Amazonian countries, from 50% up to almost 100% of the fishing takes place for personal
consumption, implying that it is not recorded in official landing statistics. Available time series data
indicate that fish consumption in Brazil, as well as commercial fish landings in Peru and Colombia, have
declined in recent years. Local case studies, national household consumption and expenditure surveys
(HCES), and market surveys, all have their benefits and drawbacks. Some minor modifications of HCES
procedures could considerably improve their usefulness for estimating fish landings in the Amazon Basin.
To improve such estimates, we propose that local case studies be used to calibrate HCES data, thus
combining the high precision of local case studies with the wide coverage and representativity of HCES
data

Keywords: Amazon fisheries, subsistence fishing, fisheries statistics, household surveys

Introduction Colombia and Brazil, while its tributaries extend

The Amazon Basin, with an area of 7 million km2,
covers about 40% of the South American continent
and is the world’s largest river basin. From its
source in the Peruvian Andes, it flows 6,575 km to
the Atlantic Ocean (Liu et al., 2009) passing through
into Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela,
and touch Guyana and Suriname. Lowlands and
uplands up to 1,000 masl make up 92% of the basin
area and house 61% of the 34 million inhabitants in
the basin (Fig. 1, Table 1). Among this population,
there are more than 1 million indigenous people

59
Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management, 25(1): 59–71, 2022. Copyright © 2022 Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management Society.
ISSN: 1463-4988 print / 1539-4077 online. DOI: 10.14321/aehm.025.01.59

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 60 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71

Figure 1. The Amazon Basin (shaded area) with major rivers and country borders.

Table 1. Human population in the Amazon Basin (in millions). Source: Own GIS analysis, based on WorldPop unconstrained, UN
adjusted, population raster data for the year 2020 (https://www.worldpop.org) and digital elevation data from the Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission (https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/).

Elevation Brazil Peru Bolivia Ecuador Colombia Guyana Venezuela Sum

0– 500 11.0 2.4 3.7 0.5 1.1 0.017 0.003 18.8
500–1000 0.3 1.2 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.005 0.002 2.2
> 1000 0.0 6.4 3.9 2.8 0.2 0.000 0.001 13.3
Sum 11.2 10.0 7.9 3.7 1.4 0.022 0.006 34.2

(UNEP et al., 2009). Since settling in the Amazon
Basin more than 10,000 years ago (Roosevelt et al.,
1996), humans have been, and to this day remain,
part of the ecosystem. The first Amazonians were
mainly hunters, fishers, and gatherers, growing
small amounts of cereals and tubers (Roosevelt
et al., 1996). Despite accelerated socio-economic,
technological, and demographic changes since the
late 19th century, the dominant life strategy in many
rural areas is still the harvesting of wild natural
resources combined with subsistence farming
(Newton et al., 2011); people thus continue to
depend on aquatic biodiversity, ecosystem services,
and healthy aquatic ecosystems. In the Amazon
Basin, fishing remains one of the most important
extractive activities, generating around 160,000
direct and 8,300 indirect jobs and an estimated
annual revenue of USD 130 million in 2001 in
Brazil alone (Almeida et al., 2003). About 200 of
the more than 2,400 fish species recorded from the
Amazon Basin (Jézéquel et al., 2020) are exploited
by commercial and subsistence fisheries (Junk et

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 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71
al., 2007). Fish provide the bulk of animal protein
to the rural and peri-urban population (e.g. Isaac
et al., 2015; da Silva and Begossi, 2009) and since
access to marine fish is limited, and aquaculture
is poorly developed, wild freshwater fish are the
primary source of protein and nutrients, especially
for rural floodplain residents and indigenous
peoples (Murrieta and Dufour, 2004; Junk et al.,
2007; Ruiz and Valencia, 2007; Gainette Prates,
2016). Case studies have demonstrated that in
much of the Amazon lowlands, fish consumption
levels are very high (Camburn, 2011; Isaac and
Almeida, 2011; Lasso-Alcalá, 2011; Sirén, 2011;
Sirén, 2021a,b) and even up to 800 g person-1
day-1 (Fabré and Alonso, 1998), which is among
the highest in the world, or 14 times the global
average. In many rural areas of the Amazon Basin,
it would currently be difficult to substitute the food
and nutrients provided by the aquatic ecosystems,
in the quantity and quality they deliver, at a cost
that would make them affordable.
Low human population densities and slow
development in rural areas in many parts of the
Amazon Basin have until recently protected
sensitive ecosystems against overexploitation and
environmental degradation. Nowadays, however,
fishing pressure is growing near urban centres,
where the populations of the more commercially
sought species (e.g. Colossoma, Arapaima and
pimelodid catfishes) are in decline (Junk et al.,
2007; Shephard et al., 2020), but to date there has
been no evidence of general overfishing (Ruffino,
2014). On average, fisher density is low, and yield/
ha is much lower than in large floodplain river
basins in Asia and Africa (Bayley and Petrere,
1989; Bayley 1998). However, the integrity of
the ecosystems upon which the fisheries depend
is increasingly under threat from unsustainable
development and climate change, which are driving
habitat degradation and fragmentation, rising
pollution, and loss of environmental flows, with
negative effects on biodiversity, aquatic resources,
and the delivery of the ecosystem services upon
which the riparian populations depend for their
livelihoods (Harrod et al., 2018). Any impact on
the supply of aquatic resources in the Amazon
Basin threatens the food and nutrition security of
the riparian populations, especially indigenous
peoples, and ultimately the achievement of the
Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) that
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61
aim “to ensure that all human beings can enjoy
prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic,
social and technological progress occurs in
harmony with nature” (Lynch et al., 2017).
Efficient management and sustainable use of
aquatic resources require proper land use planning
and management of land and forests (Ruiz Agudelo
et al., 2020). However, despite their importance,
Amazonian fisheries are frequently absent in
territorial planning and basin development
agendas (Junk et al., 2007) as their contributions
to economic and social development are largely
invisible to policy makers. This is because the
benefits derived from largely informal part-time
or seasonal activities such as fishing are poorly
assessed, which means that a proper valuation of
these sectors’ contributions to employment and
nutrition is challenging and a direct comparison with
other more data-rich sectors, such as agriculture,
power generation, navigation, and aquaculture
is therefore complicated. As a result, mitigation
of the threats to aquatic habitats, ecosystem
functioning, and fisheries is only prioritized once
the needs of other sectors have been met (Funge-
Smith and Bennett, 2020). Novel approaches for
compiling the information needed to undertake a
more comprehensive and representative evaluation
of the costs, benefits, and trade-offs of different
basin development scenarios, including the full
economic and environmental costs of replacing
protein and micronutrients in peoples’ diets lost
due to negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems, are
sorely needed (Fluet-Chouinard et al., 2018; Funge-
Smith and Bennett, 2020). However, devising a
data collection system that can capture a realistic
picture of fisheries in remote areas and seasonal
variations, which is not prohibitively expensive, is
a huge challenge.
Using HCES data Fluet-Chouinard et al.
(2018) estimated inland fish catches in 42 low- and
middle-income countries and compared the results
with the data reported to FAO. According to that
study, countries underestimated their catches in 31
cases, and overestimated them in 11 cases. Five
Amazonian countries were included in their study,
and for three of them the estimate based on HCES
data exceeded the official landings, namely Bolivia
(by a factor of 8.1), Colombia (6.2), and Peru (1.2),
whereas for two countries the estimate of HCES
data was smaller, namely Venezuela (0.8) and
 62 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71

Table 2. Estimates of total landings in each country´s share of the Amazon Basin. Abbreviations: CORR: Our correction, as described
in the text. COM: Commercial fisheries. SUB: Subsistence fisheries. CEN: Population census. OLS: Official landing statistics. LCS:
Local case studies. HCES: National household consumption and expenditure surveys. MRK: Market studies. PIL: Extrapolation
from a 50,000 km2 pilot study area, with data from canoe counts, catch, demography, and consumption.

Total landings Subsistence

Source Reference year(s) Data
(t yr-1) fishing share
Brazil
Bayley and Petrere (1989) 1980 136,900 56%1 LCS
Bayley (1998) 1991 334,500 ND LCS
576,000
CEN: 2010,
Isaac and Almeida (2011) A (CORR: ND LCS
SUB: 1975–2010
331,000)
343,000
Isaac and Almeida (2011) B 2002–2003 (CORR: ND HCES
310,000)
Peru
Hanek(1982) 1979–1981 61,000 65% PIL
Bayley and Petrere (1989) 1980 59,000 75%1 LCS
Bayley (1998) 1991 80,000 ND LCS
Sirén (2021a) A 2015–2019 87,000 49% HCES
Sirén (2021a) B COM: 2013–2017, OLS, LCS
117,000 78%
SUB: 1966–2018, CEN: 2017
Colombia
Bayley (1998) 1991 7,400 ND LCS
Sirén (2021b) OLS,
COM: 2001–2016,
15,000 72% HCES,
SUB: 2005, CEN: 1980–2015
LCS
Bolivia
Bayley and Petrere (1989) 1980 2,700 77%1 LCS
Bayley (1998) 1991 1,900 ND LCS
Camburn (2011) LCS,
1999–2008 6,000 79%
MRK
This publication 2012–2017 5,300 65% HCES
Ecuador
Sirén (2011) CEN: 2001, SUB: 1973–2001 8,400 100% LCS
This publication 2011–2012 4,600 97% HCES
Venezuela
Lasso-Alcalá (2011) CEN: 1992, LCS: 1979–1995 370 100% LCS
1
Includes also locally marketed catch

Brazil (0.7). The study was done at the country level
and ignores subnational areas or individual basins.
However, the study highlights the importance of
using a variety of data sources, including HCES,
when estimating catches from inland fisheries. In
this paper, we review previous landing estimates
from the Amazon Basin in the six principal riparian
countries and present new estimates based on
recent, or previously overlooked, data. Finally,
we discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different
methods to estimate fish landings, with emphasis
on subsistence fishing, in the Amazonian context.

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 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71
Basin-wide estimates of fish
landings in the Amazon
Bayley and Petrere (1989) estimated the total
fish yields in the Amazon Basin using census data,
by applying a stratified extrapolation of per capita
consumption figures from various case studies in
urban as well as rural areas in Brazil, Peru, and
Bolivia. The resulting estimate amounted to about
199,000 t/year in 1980 (Table 2). It was estimated
that 91% of these landings came from “white water-
influenced floodplains,” and that 62% corresponded
to fishing for personal consumption or local sale.
Bayley (1998) re-estimated the landings taking into
account population growth and new data on fish
consumption in rural floodplain areas, reaching a
basin-wide catch of 424,000 t/year in 1991. The
total “exports” from the basin were estimated to
be 20,000 t/year, 15,400 of which originated from
Brazil.
National estimates of the volume
of Amazonian fish landings and
trends in catches
Brazil: In addition to the estimates by Bayley
and Petrere (1989) and Bayley (1998), Isaac and
Almeida (2011) made two landing estimates (Table
2). The first was based on the extrapolation of the
results of 25 case studies of daily fish consumption
from 1975 to 2010. Two of the case studies were
made in indigenous communities, five in urban
areas, 16 in rural non-indigenous communities,
and two covered both urban and rural areas. Most
case studies were made along the Amazon River
itself, including eight around Santarém in the
Lower Amazon. Using population data from 2010,
the total landings were estimated at approximately
576,000 t yr-1. However, the authors assumed that
the population densities in Pará, Mato Grosso, and
Amapá states, only partly situated in the Amazon
Basin, were similar inside and outside of the
basin. Doing a GIS analysis overlaying limits of
the Amazon Basin and the respective Brazilian
states on population raster data for 2010 (from
www.worldpop.org, UN adjusted) we obtained
more accurate estimates of the population within
the Amazon Basin and, using the same per capita
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63
consumption estimates, we recalculated total fish
consumption to be 331,000 t yr-1.
The other estimate made by Isaac and Almeida
(2011) was based on a national HCES carried out
in 2004 and showed an average fish consumption
of 24 kgperson-1/year-1 in the “northern region” of
Brazil (which encompasses all the Amazonian states
including Tocantins, but excluding Mato Grosso),
which when multiplied by the estimated number
of inhabitants in the Brazilian Amazon Basin gave
an estimated fish consumption of 343,145 tyr-1 in
2010. However, also in this case, the assumption of
a homogeneous population density in each one of
the Pará, Mato Grosso, and Amapá states, led to an
overestimate of the basin population. In addition,
no distinction was made between marine and
freshwater fish. We recalculated this estimate of
annual landings to be 309,864 t yr-1, correcting for
these biases and also applying a conversion factor
of 1.5 to convert ingested weight to live weight.
This factor is lower than those commonly found in
the literature (between 2.0 and 3.0 for fillets of most
species [FAO, 2000]), but higher than what is seen
in inland fisheries in parts of SE Asia for example
(1.25; Hortle, 2007). As in SE Asia, people in rural
Amazonia often eat the inner organs of the fish as
well as the soft parts of heads, gills, and fins, and
losses are therefore small but the average size of the
fish eaten in the Amazon is larger than in SE Asia
(pers. obs. by the authors), and the contribution of
the inedible parts is thus somewhat higher.
None of these estimates distinguished between
wild-caught and farmed fish. Fish farming has
grown rapidly in the Amazonian states over the
last couple of decades, and in 2019 production was
estimated to be 120,000 t yr-1 by the government
(https://sidra.ibge.gov.br/tabela/3940) and 188,000
t yr-1 by the producers’ organizations (Peixe BR,
2020). As how much of this fish was actually
consumed within the Amazon Basin is unknown,
this confuses estimates of fish landings based on
per capita consumption data. However, aggregated
data from the national HCES indicated a 72%
reduction in the consumption of freshwater fish
between 2002–2003 and 2017–2018 (Fig. 2).
Estimated fish consumption in the Amazonian
states, according to this survey, was 46,013 t yr-1 in
2017–2018 or just a quarter of the total production
of cultured fish in the same area. As the data do
not distinguish between captured and farmed fish,
 64 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71

the amount of consumed fish from capture fisheries
might be even lower. Between 2007 and 2011, the
government published statistical yearbooks on
commercial fish landings in inland waters, but the
published statistics do not distinguish between the
basins where the fish were landed. During these
years, the landings in the Amazonian states varied
between 135,000 and 156,000 t yr-1 without any
clear trend. Brazil has not reported inland fisheries
landings to FAO since 2014 (FAO, 2021), and no
official landings statistics have been published for
the Brazilian Amazonian states since 2011.
Peru: Hanek (1982) and Bayley and Petrere
(1989) extrapolated per capita consumption data
using slightly different methods, with both studies
concluding that the total landings from the Peruvian
Amazon Basin (PAB) were around 60,000 t yr-1, of
which 60% was for personal consumption. Bayley
(1998) concluded that the landings had increased
to about 84,000 t yr-1. From the early 2000s and
onwards, data on fish consumption from yearly
national HCES have become available and official
landing statistics for commercial fisheries are
published yearly by the Ministry of Production
(cf. Sirén, 2021a). Sirén (2021a) estimated total
landings of fish from the PAB by analysing
microdata on consumption from national HCES.
This led to estimated yearly catches of between
83,000 and 94,000 t between 2015 and 2019, with
an average of 87,000 t during that period. The

Figure 2. Trends in freshwater fish consumption (from capture fisheries and aquaculture) in the Brazilian states that are totally or
partly located inside the Amazon Basin. Based on figures from national HCES (https://www.ibge.gov.br/en/statistics/social/income-
expenditure-and-consumption/17387-pof-2008-2009-en.html?=andt=o-que-e) and official population censuses (https://www.ibge.
gov.br/en/statistics/social/population/22836-2020-census-censo4.html?=andt=o-que-e).

Figure 3. Trends over time of capture fisheries in the Peruvian Amazon. Commercial fisheries 1: based on official landings statistics.
Total landings and subsistence catches: based on national HCES data on fish consumption. Commercial fisheries 2: total landings
minus subsistence fishery landings. Full references to the source data are provided in Sirén (2021a).

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 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71 65

margin of error is large, however, as fish species
were registered using vernacular names only,
which in some cases did not permit unambiguously
distinguishing between marine and Amazonian
fish species. Fish obtained by other means than
buying (means not specified) were considered to
represent the subsistence catch and were estimated
to approximate 43,000 t yr-1, or 49% of the total
landings. Sirén (2021a) made another estimate
by adding total commercial landings in the PAB
according to official landings statistics (on average
26,000 t yr-1) to the estimated catches by subsistence
fishing (91,000 t yr-1) calculated by extrapolating
per capita consumption figures from local case
studies conducted over the last 50 years, giving a
total of 117,000 t yr-1. Sirén (2021a) also plotted
the estimates over time. The HCES data show an
increasing trend in the consumption of Amazonian
fish since 2003 until a peak was reached in 2015;
since then consumption has been slightly lower.
The official landing statistics, on the other hand,
indicate that landings peaked in 2009, after which
they declined, with the exception of 2015 when
landings rose again. In recent years, commercial
landings have been just above half the 2009 level
(Fig. 3).
Colombia: In the Colombian Amazon Basin
(CAB), much of the commercial fish catch is
landed in Leticia on the Amazon River. Leticia
right at the border between Peru and Brazil, and
most of the fish landed in the town have been
caught in those countries. After Bayley (1998), to
our knowledge, only Sirén (2021b) has attempted
to quantify fish landings in the CAB. That estimate
was based on official landing statistics combined
with extrapolation of per capita consumption
figures from a national HCES conducted in 2005,
and extrapolation of per capita consumption figures
from local case studies in remote municipalities
where national HCES data were unavailable.
In this way, he estimated total landings to be
15,000 t yr-1, out of which about 11,000 t yr-1
(72%) corresponded to subsistence fishing. The
collection of official landing statistics in the CAB
has been conducted in different places in different
years, very rarely covering all months of the year,
leading to a considerable risk of seasonal bias and
therefore a large margin of error. Leticia is the only
site for which a continuous time series could be
constructed, and this shows a strongly decreasing
trend (Fig. 4). Sirén (2021b) notes that comparison
of case studies of commercial fisheries in Puerto
Leguízamo on the Putumayo River, as well as in La
Pedrera/Araucara/Puerto Santander on the Caquetá
River, in the 1990s compared to 2010 indicate that
the landings have decreased by some 30–70%.
Bolivia: Bayley and Petrere (1989) and Bayley
(1998) made a crude estimate of total fish landings
in the Bolivian Amazon Basin (BAB). More
recently, Camburn (2011) estimated subsistence
landings by indigenous communities to be 4,710 t/
year and consumption in cities to be 1,265 t/year,

Figure 4. Trends over time in commercial landings in Leticia, Colombia (Amazon River) according to official landings statistics.
Full references to the source data are provided in Sirén (2021b).

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 66 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71
i.e. a total of 5,975 t/year, two to three times more
than previous estimates. The author noted that even
this number probably was too low as it did not
include the non-indigenous population and Andean
indigenous populations who have migrated into the
BAB. Between 1980 and 1994, Bolivia published
yearly official landing statistics on commercial
fisheries in the BAB, and during these years the
landings almost tripled (Fig. 5). However, since
1995, the collection of landing statistics has been
discontinued. A couple of unpublished studies since
then have provided widely varying data of 2,223
t yr-1 and 4,362 t yr-1 (respectively MDRyT 2015
and FAUNAGUA-WWF 2018, cited by Espinoza-
Antezana and Van Damme, 2020).
Figure 5. Gross and net production of fish in the Bolivian
Amazon Basin between 1980 and 1994 based on official
landing statistics from CDP. The net production excludes losses
(estimated to be 20%) due to inadequate handling, conservation,
evisceration, transport, and lack of hygiene from the site of
capture to the sites of consumption. Source: Van Damme et al.
(2011).
The government has carried out national HCES
since 1978. The surveys from 2012, 2013, and 2017
contained enough detail to allow us to estimate the
consumption of Amazonian fish. For 2012 and
2013, we included the categories “fresh fish” and
“other fish,” but excluded the category “sardines
and tuna.” In the 2017 survey, the categories had
changed slightly and we included “fresh fish,”
but excluded “canned fresh or processed fish
and seafood.” For fish that had been purchased,
we multiplied the weight by a factor of 1.1 (a
conservative figure based on a range of freshwater
fish species [FAO, 2000]) in order to convert to live
weight, assuming that fish were sold eviscerated.
The data distinguish between urban and rural
households, and the location of the households is
detailed to the level of the nine departments of the
country. The entire departments of Pando and Beni
and most of Santa Cruz lie in the lowlands of the
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Amazon Basin, whereas the southernmost part of
the Santa Cruz department belongs to the La Plata
Basin. That area is about 21% of the size of the
BAB, and it is sparsely populated. We considered
that including figures of consumed fish from
personal production in rural households in these
three departments would provide a reasonable,
but slightly overestimated, approximation of
subsistence fishing and aquaculture in the BAB.
For all other departments in the country, for urban
areas in the eastern departments, and for fish that
households in rural areas of the eastern departments
had bought rather than produced themselves, we
used the fractions of Wiefels (2006). Based on
market surveys, he found that 17% of the fish
bought in the cities of Santa Cruz and Trinidad
in the lowlands of the BAB, and 8% and 6%,
respectively, in the cities of Cochabamba and La
Paz-El Alto in the highlands, originated from
the Amazon. Lacking better estimates, we used
the figures for Santa Cruz and Trinidad in rural
areas in the eastern departments, and the figures
for Cochabamba and La Paz-El Alto for their
respective departments. All other departments are
located further away from the Amazon lowlands
than Cochabamba and La Paz, and we therefore
assumed that the consumption of Amazonian fish
there was zero.
It should be noted that the Bolivian HCES is
a national level study, and the household sample
was never intended for analysis at a subnational
level. The analyses we do for only the three eastern
provinces therefore suffer from a problem of a
relatively small sample size and the associated high
random variability. Moreover, there were a few
entries containing unreasonably high values, which
because of the small sample size could significantly
affect the final results of the calculations. We
therefore removed three outliers from the dataset
and obtained an estimated consumption of 8,553
t yr-1 of Amazonian fish. As this included wild
captured as well as cultivated fish, we also
subtracted the estimated fish culture production
in the BAB or 2,694 t yr-1 (IPD PACU, 2016 cited
by Navia, 2018). Thus, we reached a final estimate
of 5,343 t yr-1 from capture fisheries, out of which
65% corresponded to subsistence fishing.
Ecuador: Total inland catches reported to
FAO by Ecuador in 2018 were 123 tonnes (FAO,
2021). It is not known, however, in which basin this
 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71
volume was caught but most likely it represents
fishing in monitored reservoirs in the coastal
region. Sirén (2011) estimated fish landings in
the Ecuadorian Amazon Basin (EAB) to be 8,400
t yr-1, based on extrapolation of case studies of
consumption assuming that commercial fishing,
fish consumption among non-indigenous people,
and consumption of farmed fish among indigenous
peoples were all so small that they could be
ignored. As such, it should be noted that although
fish farming in the EAB has expanded rapidly in
the last 20 years, it was still absent or incipient in
indigenous communities in the late 1990s and the
early to mid-2000s when the data cited by Sirén
(2011) were collected.
In 2011/2012, the government conducted a
national HCES (https://anda.inec.gob.ec/anda/
index.php/catalog/291), including questions about
the frequency with which households consumed
different categories of products. The data
distinguished between items that the household had
bought and those it had produced itself. Data quality
limitations made it impossible to use these data to
estimate the total consumption of wild Amazonian
fish in the country, but allowed estimation of the
subsistence catch. The codebook of the dataset
included almost 40 categories corresponding to
different species or dishes of fish. However, only
three of these could unequivocally be identified as
native Amazonian fish species; others were defined
by vernacular names that are also used for marine
species. Moreover, several entries in the data base
consisted of impossible combinations of species,
ways of procurement (i.e. trade vs. personal
production), and place. That is, there were entries
of fish of particular species that allegedly had been
produced by a household living in a place where
the species in question did not occur.
These inconsistencies were somewhat
less problematic, however, when focusing on
subsistence fishing only. To calculate this, we
considered all entries of fish categorized as “own
production” to represent subsistence fishing and
included all categories of fish except canned fish
and the main aquaculture species (tilapia and
rainbow trout).
We extracted the data from households in
Sucumbíos, Orellana, Napo, Pastaza, Morona-
Santiago, and Zamora-Chinchipe provinces that
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67
all have western boundaries on the transition zone
between the lowland tropical forest biome and the
Andean highlands. The dataset also distinguished
between urban and rural households, and the
ethnicity of each person. For the Amazonian
provinces, 5,026 households were surveyed, out
of which 4,183 were non-indigenous, 334 were
indigenous, and 509 had both indigenous and
non-indigenous members. We combined the latter
two into one single category of 843 “indigenous
households.” This led to an estimated total catch of
4,478 t/year for personal consumption, out of which
96% corresponded to indigenous households in
rural areas. This figure did not include commercial
fishery. However, a recent study by Burgos-Morán
et al. (2017), based on market surveys, estimated
the extent of commercial fishing in the region at just
125 t yr-1, confirming that it is very small compared
to subsistence fishing. Adding this amount to our
estimate of subsistence fishing, we obtained total
landings of approximately 4,600 t yr-1.
Venezuela: Venezuela occupies only a tiny,
remote part of Amazon Basin where no commercial
fishing takes place, but indigenous people fish
for subsistence. Lasso-Alcalá (2011), based on
extrapolation of case studies of consumption,
estimated annual landings to be 367 t yr-1, which is
insignificant compared to the country’s main inland
fisheries in the Orinoco and not even included in
national statistics.
Discussion
Comparing the latest available estimates of fish
landings in the Amazon Basin with those made for
1991 by Bayley (1998), the estimates for Brazil
and Peru have not changed much, whereas the
estimates for Colombia and Bolivia have increased
considerably. The estimates for Ecuador, a country
which was not studied by Bayley (1998), are of
similar magnitude to those for Bolivia, which has
a much larger area and a much larger population,
particularly in the lowlands. An important finding is
that in all the countries, excepting Brazil for which
such an analysis could not be made, subsistence
fishing comprised a very large proportion of the
total catch, ranging from at least 50% in Peru and
Bolivia, to nearly 100% in Ecuador and Venezuela.
Several authors have observed that indigenous
 68 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71
people consume large amounts of fish in the
Amazon (Camburn, 2011; Lasso-Alcalá, 2011;
Sirén, 2011), a finding that is confirmed by HCES
data from Ecuador and Colombia.
Estimating the total fish landings involves the
challenge of avoiding errors of inclusion as well
as errors of omission. In particular, one must
avoid including fish from other river basins, from
the sea, or from aquaculture in the calculations.
Moreover, one must make sure to account for all
fish captured, while avoiding counting the same
fish twice, and this often leads to difficult questions
about the representativeness of the data and the
limits of the universe of different studies. The data
we encountered on the capture of wild fish from
the Amazon Basin constituted: 1. Fish landings: i)
Official landing statistics for commercial fishing,
ii) Local case studies of commercial fishing; 2.
Fish consumption: i) National HCES, ii) Local case
studies of subsistence fishing; 3. Market studies.
Peru has most systematically been collecting
landing statistics for commercial fisheries in the
Amazon Basin. These are published every year
with a fair level of detail, both geographically
and in terms of captured species. Nevertheless, an
evaluation concluded that the information system
did not consider “clear technical and administrative
aspects in terms of the collection, storage, analysis
and divulgation of the information” (WCS-
DIREPRO-L, 2017), in other words, the numbers
might not be all that precise. The collection of
landing statistics from the CAB has been erratic,
covering different sites in different years and rarely
covering all months. Peru, as well as Colombia,
lacks proper descriptions of the methodologies used
and definitions of the universe of the studies. Brazil
and Bolivia discontinued the collection of official
landing statistics for their inland fisheries several
years ago, and neither Ecuador nor Venezuela
appear to have ever included Amazonian fisheries
in the official landing statistics.
National HCES can to some extent be used to
estimate fish consumption. However, published
tables could only be used for Brazil, whereas for
Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Ecuador, it was
necessary to analyse microdata. Unfortunately,
none of the datasets differentiates between fish
from capture fisheries and aquaculture. For Peru
and Bolivia, this was resolved by using figures on
aquaculture production from other sources, whereas
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for Ecuador the data contained species names
which allowed the most commonly cultured fish
species to be excluded. For Brazil and Colombia,
it was not possible to distinguish between wild
and farmed fish in the dataset, and this was an
issue, particularly for Brazil, where aquaculture
production is high. Only the Brazilian HCES data
contained enough species detail to clearly separate
freshwater from marine fish. For the Peruvian data,
ambiguous vernacular names created confusion
resulting in a considerable margin of error
regarding the consumption of Amazonian fish. For
the Colombian, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian data, the
subcategories of fish were so broad that any attempt
to distinguish between fish from the Amazon and
the sea was impossible. The HCES data for Peru,
Bolivia, and Ecuador, however, distinguished
between items that had been bought or acquired
in other ways. Thus, it could be assumed that
fish that had not been bought had been caught or
produced by the household itself. For Colombia,
on the other hand, the distinction between urban
and rural inhabitants allowed the assumption that
city dwellers buy fish from commercial fishers,
whereas rural inhabitants catch their own fish.
Extrapolating data from local case studies is
risky, given that the study sites are not selected at
random and it is possible that researchers studying
fish consumption introduce bias by predominantly
conducting their studies in sites where fish
consumption is relatively high. The estimates of
subsistence fishing that we have presented based on
national HCES data were, in the cases of Brazil, Peru
and Ecuador, much lower than the corresponding
estimates based on local case studies. Similarly, for
a few sites in Colombia, where it was possible to
compare the two types of data at the local scale,
the consumption figures from national HCES data
were much lower than those based on local case
studies. Only in Bolivia was the estimate based on
HCES data almost identical to another estimate
based primarily on local case studies. Finally,
market studies were conducted in Ecuador (Burgos-
Morán et al., 2017) and Bolivia (Wiefels, 2006),
which helped to estimate the amount of Amazonian
fish commercialized in urban areas. Such market
studies require identifying the main points of fish
trade and interviewing people involved in the trade.
Although they provide very detailed information
on the amount, origin, and species composition of
 Sirén et al. / Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management 25 (2022) 59–71
traded fish, there is a risk of committing errors of
omission, as it can be difficult to identify and visit
all relevant trading points. Another major source of
uncertainty consists of the factors for converting
ingested or traded weight to live weight of the fish.
The respective proportions of flesh, bones, and
guts vary considerably among species, and it is not
always made clear whether published figures refer
to live, eviscerated, or ingested weight.
Available data indicate that fish consumption in
Brazil and commercial fish landings in Colombia
have both declined sharply in recent years. The
Peruvian official landing statistics also indicate a
sharp decrease, whereas the HCES data suggest that
the total fish catch has plateaued. The indications
of decreasing fish landings coincide with reports
about a “nutrition transition” in the Amazon Basin,
implying a shift from fish to meat (de Jesus Silva
et al., 2017; van Vliet et al., 2015). The observed
decreases might be due to overfishing, habitat
destruction, or improved access to alternative
foodstuffs. But it cannot be ruled out that they
are just spurious effects of the data collection
procedures. For Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela,
available data do not allow any conclusion about
trends over time.
In conclusion, how much fish is actually
extracted from natural aquatic ecosystems of the
Amazon every year remains opaque. Different
methods of estimation all have their benefits and
drawbacks. The most promising method might
be the national HCES that are carried out on a
regular basis. Making a few relatively simple
improvements regarding the collection of data on
fish consumption would be the cheapest way to
considerably improve the reliability of estimates
of fish consumption and landings. However,
HCES data must also be collected in the remotest
settlements, where consumption of wild fish tends
to be highest. Moreover, the fish taxa must be
properly identified, if not to the species level then
at least to a level that permits distinction between
freshwater and marine species. The distinction
between items bought or produced by the household
itself is also important. A simple question about the
origin of the fish – wild captured or farmed – should
also be included. Conducting detailed case studies
in a stratified sample of sites where national HCES
data have been collected could also be a way to
allow proper calibration between the two types of
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69
data, and thus combine the advantages of the detail
and accuracy of local case studies with the wide
geographic coverage and statistical representativity
of national HCES data.
Conclusions
Fish from capture fisheries remain an
important part of the livelihoods of millions of
people, particularly indigenous Amazonians,
and the conservation and sustainable use of the
fishery resource ought to be a high priority for the
governments of Amazonian countries. It is therefore
imperative that they adequately monitor how much
fish is extracted from the basin for commercial and
subsistence purposes.
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