No longer catfish bait (Image: Kevin Schafer/Minden Pictures)

No more boto butchery. Brazil has banned a catfish fishery that relied on killing river dolphins for bait. The country will use genetic tests to enforce the ban.

For eight years Brazilian fishers have been catching catfish called piracatinga commercially. To lure these “vulture catfish”, they illegally kill and cut up pink river dolphins or “boto”, a second species of river dolphin called tucuxi and crocodile-like caimans. All three have suffered steep population declines. At one site on the Solimoes river, researchers recorded a 50 per cent drop in boto numbers since 2004.

Footage of a dolphin mother and her unborn infant being cut up and used as bait, shown on television, provoked outrage.


Now the government has banned the commercial capture of piracatinga for five years from 1 January 2015. Government sources say the ban will probably become permanent.

Clampdown on catfish

Specialist police will genetically test caught fish to see if they are piracatinga, and test their stomach contests to see if they have eaten dolphin. If evidence of piracatinga fishing is found, the fish-packers could be shut down and fined, and the person who caught the fish may lose their fishing licence.

Conservationists are delighted. “It’s the biggest fisheries ban since 1967 when Brazil’s original faunal protection laws were made,” says Jone César of the Friends of the Manatee Association, a conservation group based in Manaus, Brazil.

However, some are concerned that there will be a dolphin killing spree before the ban starts, so are calling for it to begin immediately.