Ethnoecology and use of fishes by the Cubeo people from the Cuduyarí River, Colombian Amazonia

Abstract

Background

Ethnoichthyology studies the knowledge of human communities about the uses, perception, and behavioral characteristics of fish, based on their cosmology, cosmogony, and culture. This study focused on the Cubeo (Pâmiwâ) ethnic group that inhabits the Cuduyarí River (Vaupés, Colombia) provides information on fishing activities, use of fishes, its ecological distributions (occurrence in rivers, pools, and/or streams) and seasonality (occurrence in low and/or high waters). Additionally, names in the Central Tukano language (Cubeo) are provided.

Methods

The compilation of information was based on a visual catalog prepared from rapid ecological evaluations, previously carried out by the Amazon Institute of Scientific Research SINCHI. Workshops with the indigenous people were held in communities in the lower, middle, and upper sections of the basin to collect information. Network analyses were done to determine the fishing gear selectivity of the most common species and gears used regarding ecosystems. The coherence in the perception of fish resources among the three communities was assessed via multivariate analyses.

Results

The results showed that a large percentage (89%) of the species are consumed. There is a generalized perception of resource decline, and there is no coherence regarding the ecological and seasonal distributions of fish reported by the three communities. These differences may be due to an effect of the structural characteristics of the basin in the different sectors where the communities are located.

Conclusions

Species consumed by the Cubeo in the Cuduyarí do not represent a high commercial value at the Amazon River basin scale. Nevertheless, locally, they are the main source of animal protein and most of the time, the sole source of income. The importance of these species must be recognized and must be a priority for conservation. Knowledge related to the fish resource by indigenous groups, including basic information and its usage, is essential to guide and implement management and conservation strategies specific to each region under study.

Background

The Amazonian aquatic systems are recognized as an important source of biodiversity [1,2,3]. These systems host the most diverse freshwater ichthyofauna in the world [4]. Approximately 2700 species have been described, but the real number most probably super pass the 3500 species [5,6,7,8].

The high species diversity of freshwater fish translates into essential ecosystem services (ESs) that affect human welfare and provide benefits to local communities [9,10,11,12]. Freshwater fishes in the Amazon represent demand-derived ES, such as recreational values [11]. Some of the species are familiar to the ornamental trade: cardinal tetras, discus, angel cichlids, armored “pleco” catfish, and stingrays. Amazonian fishes represent also fundamental ES because are indispensable for the provision of most of the animal protein sources for human consumption in the region [9, 11, 13, 14]: peacock bass, black prochilodus, branquinha, goliath catfishes, tambaquí, and pirarucu [5].

Although very few species might represent the most important fisheries of the Amazon at the regional scale [15], many other species constitute the sole source of income and animal protein for indigenous and non-indigenous human settlements at the local scale. Thus, although some species do not represent a great commercial value for the Amazonian big-scale fisheries, locally they provide humans with direct or indirect social, economic, and environmental benefits. That is the common case for the human settlements that inhabit the surrounding areas of less productive waters [16, 17], the so-called “blackwaters”, where biomass, species richness, and abundance are relatively low [18,19,20].

The territories of the Vaupés department, located in the Colombian Amazon Basin, contain predominantly typical Amazonian blackwaters that drain well-preserved terra firme forests and savannas [21, 22]. The river networks in this region are characterized by tea-colored waters, with sandy substrates exposed during the low-water season [21,22,23]. The Cuduyarí River, near Mitú City, is part of this river network of the Vaupés Department and one of the affluents of the Vaupés River; one of the main systems of the upper Rio Negro, which is one of the main affluents of the Amazon River Basin [24, 25].

The Cuduyarí is predominantly inhabited by various groups of the Cubeo ethnicity [26]. For most of the Cubeo people, this area is recognized as its origin epicenter [26, 27]. Nevertheless, over time, other groups arrived integrating with the groups originating from the Cuduyarí River [26]. The basin's main channel is the principal transportation route system to Mitú City – the department’s capital – and other areas of the Vaupés department. Therefore, traditional and economic activities rely on the navigability of the main channel. The economic activities of the indigenous communities in the basin are subsistence agriculture, extraction of wild fruits, fishing and hunting, and craftsmanship; mainly in a traditional way, without the using materials and equipment introduced by modern colonizers [27,28,29].

The increase of the indigenous population in the Cuduyarí River basin generates an increase in demand for animal protein, and therefore, an increase in fishing pressure [28]. This situation not only concerns the human settlements located in the basin but also concerns the inhabitants of Mitú since Cuduyarí's fishery products represent about half of its fishery trade in the city. Therefore, the fishing activities in the Cuduyarí are not only relevant at the local scale, but they are also of great relevance at the regional scale.

The perception of indigenous communities about fish concerning spatial and temporal dynamics, basic knowledge, and use is essential to guiding and implementing conservation and management strategies for these resources [30]. Fisheries management requires a comprehensive approach to the resources, the society that uses them, the economic dynamics, and the natural conditions that support them [31]. Carrying out participatory and inclusive research with non-specialized personnel, seeking in this case to incorporate local ecological knowledge, to generate answers on basic issues associated with fish and their use, is fundamental to contribute to their sustainable management [32].

To document traditional knowledge of the Cubeo ethnicity about fishing activities and fish basic ecology, work with local community members was carried out in the Cuduyarí river basin in the lower, middle, and upper sections at the Pituna, San Javier, and Wacurabá Cubeo communities, respectively (Fig. 1). We aimed to provide information on the fishing areas and other details of the fishing events; gears and materials used and targeted species. From an ecological perspective, we evaluated the congruence in the traditional knowledge among the three indigenous communities, regarding fish species abundance and decay in recent history, seasonality, and fish distributions in the aquatic ecosystems (i.e., river channels, pools, streams, and rapids). Additionally, considering the pervasive loss of traditional knowledge in the Amazon region [33, 34], we provide a list of fish names used in the Cubeo language. We envisage that the documented knowledge herein will be fundamental for the management and conservation plans for the responsible use of Cuduyari’s fish resources.

Fig. 1

Location of the Cuduyarí River basin in the department of Vaupés and its hydrographic limits. *Location of the three communities, Pituna, San Javier, and Wacurabá, in the lower, middle, and upper basin, respectively

Methods

The Cuduyarí study area and Indigenous territory

The Cuduyari basin is located within the Mitú municipality, department of Vaupés. The basin has an elongated shape in a West to East direction with the following dimensions: an area of 1731 km², a perimeter of 272 km, a length of 101 km, and a width of 27.4 km (Fig. 1). The river flows into the Vaupés River a few kilometers downstream of the urban area of the Mitú city. According to the data obtained by cartography created by its inhabitants, the basin is made up of 272 streams, 48 pools, and 13 ponds [27]. The Cuduyarí waters are typically Amazonian blackwaters, poor in nutrients, and characterized by the tea color, although they present seasonal variations in their color. The blackwaters are also characterized by a low pH (3.5–6.0) [20, 35].

The Cuduyarí river basin is part of the Great Vaupés Indigenous Guard, created by Resolution No. 086 in 1982. The basin is populated by 21 Indigenous communities organized as the “Association of Traditional Authorities ~ pamijabova of the Cuduyarí River—ASOUDIC”, settled mainly on the banks from the headwaters to its mouth in the Vaupés River [27]. The dynamics of the population present in the Cuduyarí River basin is rural, mostly made up of members of the Cubeo ethnic group belonging to different clans, with a total of 1246 people [26].

As most of the indigenous communities from the Amazon, the Cubeo people have been under the influence of the Catholic Church [36]. Their language is one of the two most common languages used along the Vaupés River Basin [36]. Like other indigenous ethnicities in the Amazon, they have a strong relationship with nature. Their economy is organized by an ecological calendar that is associated with the seasonality of the environment [26].

Fieldwork and data compilation

Our study was performed simultaneously with the research project “Pesca en el Río Cuduyarí: uso y conocimiento de los peces en las comunidades de la etnia Cubeo”. The main purpose of the project was to carry out a citizen science exercise within the framework of the ICTIO initiative (https://ictio.org), to monitor species of commercial importance for the Cuduyarí river basin. Permits for ethnological studies are not required in Colombia. However, before fieldwork, data collection on traditional knowledge was authorized by the indigenous community leaders.

To gather information regarding traditional knowledge, 48-h workshops were done in the three communities: Pituna (located at 1° 17′ 44″ N, 70° 18′ 39″ W, altitude is 179 m a.s.l.;), San Javier (located at 1° 21′ 59″ N, 70° 33′ 38″ W, altitude is 192 m a.s.l.), and Wacurabá (located at 1° 23′ 26″ N, 70° 54′ 02″ W, altitude is 206 m a.s.l.). According to official data, two decades ago, each of the communities is composed of 77, 55, and 159 people, respectively [26, 36]. By 2022, the numbers increased to 198, 140, and 215 people [27]. The workshops were strategically structured for rapid documentation from a comprehensive perspective. These workshops included the participation of children, young people, and adults, both men and women. The members of each community were divided into groups for the compilation of information about fishing areas, recognized species, use of species, and aspects of ecology such as abundance, seasonality, and distribution in aquatic ecosystems (i.e., rivers, streams, rapids, and pools). The consensual ideas were shared orally among all the participants and discussed when the working groups considered it appropriate to debate within the framework of the Indigenous Life Plan of the Cubeo Indigenous Group from the Cuduyarí-ILPCC [26]. The ILPCC deals with the development of the Colombian Society, which emphasizes planning as a regulatory tool between ethnic societies and the government’s institutions.

Fishing areas

At the beginning of the workshop sessions, the criteria or guidelines for the delimitation of the geographical areas where the members of each of the communities carry out fishing were debated. Also, a timeline was discussed to identify if the criteria for defining the fishing zones were stated by their ancestors, or if they corresponded to modern delimitation criteria, including current competent entities for conservation and management purposes.

Fishing gears

Open lists were structured by each of the participants to write down common fishing gear used. The open lists included traditional arts and those recently introduced by modern colonizers. We use network graphs to be able to identify the use of the different gears regarding ecosystems (rivers, pools, and streams) and gear selectivity of the most common species. Additionally, some of the participants created diagrams of each of the identified gears.

Fish species recognized and use

We proceeded with the preparation of open lists of the species that each of the participants recognized. These lists included the Spanish common names and the names in the Cubeo language to consolidate a list of scientific names used by the modern classification system. The symbology of the Cubeo language was revised by Luis Jorge Barbosa Hernández who is a certified reviewer by ASOUDIC.

For the definition of the use of the species, a fish catalog of the Cuduyarí River prepared before the project was used as a reference. The information that makes up this catalog (natural history and images) derives from an exhaustive bibliographic review and field work previously carried out in the Cuduyarí River basin by the Amazonian Scientific Research Institute SINCHI. The 87 species of fish that make up this catalog have scientific reference specimens deposited in the Ichthyological Collection of the Colombian Amazon-CIACOL, which is part of the biological collections of the SINCHI Institute located at the main headquarters in Leticia, Amazonas.

Ecological aspects

The compilation of the information referred to in this section was based on the catalog of species of the basin mentioned above. Therefore, the participants' perception of the ecology of the 87 recorded species was consulted. These ecological aspects included spatial and temporal components.

As for the spatial components, they include the fishing sites according to the aquatic ecosystems of the basin (main channel of the river, pools, and streams tributaries of the main channel) and whether they correspond to a common or rare species. To complement the lists of distributions according to aquatic ecosystems, drawings were prepared that included fish occurrences in the ecosystems. The temporal components included: seasonality and whether they are present throughout the annual hydrological cycle or only in one of the two phases (high-water or low-water); and historical changes in abundance, if a decrease in fish and fishing resources is perceived over time.

Data analysis

A series of multivariate analyses were carried out to evaluate the similarity between communities in the species recognized with a name in Spanish and Cubeo, its uses, and the different ecological aspects. For the evaluation of recognized species and their use, the Bray–Curtis index [37] was used, which is a common tool to evaluate differences between biological communities, for which we assumed the same comparative principle. This index calculates values between 0 and 1, where 0 demonstrates equality in the comparison. To evaluate aspects of ecology (abundances, seasonality, changes in abundance over time, and ecological distributions) a co-inertia analysis (COIA) was used [38]. The COIA is a multivariate analysis that allows evaluating the costructure of two data matrices that have been previously ordered, which in this case is a qualitative factor ordering method [39]. Additionally, to identify plausible associations of the most common fishes with a specific ecosystem, we use a species indicator index [40].

Data management and statistical tests for analysis and interpretation of the results were carried out with the R software [41], using the statistical packages igraph [42], vegan [43], and ade4 [44].

Results

The approach in the workshops was intended to compile information on the aspects to be documented according to three proposed age groups: children, youth, and adults. However, the internal dynamics of the communities, family ties, and to avoid the exclusion of community members, the workshop’s activities were carried out together and not by age groups. The information presented herein reflects consensual traditional knowledge generated by the working groups from all age groups without separation between them, including men and women (see Annex 1 for attendance lists of adult participants in the working groups). Groups contained mixed members in terms of age and included a total of 99 participants from which 65 were males, 34 were females, and six participants were children.

Fishing areas

In all cases, the communities reported that fishing activities are done in all the aquatic ecosystems, with the Cuduyarí main channel prevailing as the main capture site. According to the meetings held with the participants of the Pituna community, before the inference of the government’s environmental authority (Corporation for the Development of the North and East of the Amazon-CDA), there was no delimitation of fishing in terms of the areas. The movement of fishermen was free throughout the entire Cuduyarí system. Only after the formulation of the Indigenous Life Plans, fishing areas were delimited. Afterward, fishermen from a given community must fish in a delimited area determined by a common agreement between adjacent communities. In the communities of San Javier and Wacurabá, on the contrary, it was mentioned that these limits of the fishing zones have always existed and have been defined by common agreement between the adjacent communities. However, historically, there has been disrespect for these limits by some of the territory's inhabitants.

Fishing gears

The participants of the working groups recognized a total of 21 fishing gears and implements in the communities of Pituna, San Javier, and Wacurabá (Table 1; see Fig. 2 for diagrams of the ancestral fishing gears drawn by the participants of the workshops). In the community of Pituna, nine gears were recognized, 14 in the community of San Javier, and 12 in the community of Wacurabá. Of the total of 21 recognized arts and gears, five correspond to arts or gears recently introduced by the colonists. Most of the arts and gears are traditional, and very few have been introduced by the colonists (see their corresponding names in Cubeo and Spanish and English when applied (Table 1).

Table 1 Different fishing gears and implements recognized, ecosystems where gears are used, and most common fishes caught per gear

Fig. 2

Drawings of fishing gear made by the participants of the workshops. From top to bottom and left to right: arch and arrow, cacurí, dip net, canoe and paddle, flashlight, pisá, matapí, matapí, pimporro, cacurí, trap, and sagaya

Network analysis with the most common fish used by the communities revealed very few cases of gear-fish selectivity (Fig. 3a). The kurupio, jujico, nuritaco, and jujico picudo are those fishes that require specialized fishing gear. Overall, fishing gears are implemented in all ecosystems. Only the small matapí and the espinel are specialized gears to use in one of the ecosystem types (Fig. 3b).

Fig. 3

Network diagrams for (a) fish and gears and (b) ecosystems and gears

Fish names and use

Most of the species in the catalog were recognized by community members (see Fig. 4, for diagrams of some of the species recognized); only seven of the species were not assigned names in Spanish or Cubeo (see Table 2 for corrected Cubeo names and Annex 2 for Cubeo names before correction). Regarding the open lists of fish made by 99 participants (Annex 3), they made up a compiled list of 97 different names (Annex 2) in Spanish with their respective names in Cubeo. The similarity analysis according to the species that are recognized by the members of each of the communities demonstrates greater similarity between Pituna and San Javier and less similarity between San Javier and Wacurabá (Table 3).

Fig. 4

Fish drawings of some of the recognized species (names in Cubeo): a kurupio, b borikakɨ, c dodé, d ñapãko, e wariko, f jūnarū, g yuparidɨ, h jujico, i veimaive, j borikakɨ, k yacaco, l borikakɨ, m borikakɨ, n mūjadocarū

Table 2 List of fish species, use, and names in Spanish and Cubeo

Table 3 Results of multivariate analyses: dissimilarity indices (Bray–Curtis) for species recognized and their use between communities (values close to zero assume greater similarity) and correlation coefficients (RV) between the data matrices of the ecological aspects between communities

Of the 87 species included in the catalog, 77 species were recognized for consumption in the community of Pituna, 71 in San Javier, and 70 species in Wacurabá (Table 2). Regarding the use of the 87 species in the catalog, the overall results demonstrate that the three communities use the same species from the fishes that are represented in the catalog (see use comparison values in Table 3).

Ecological aspects

The raw data for each of the ecological aspects show differences in what is perceived in terms of abundance. Regarding seasonality, there is a general consistency in the species that are perceived to be presented throughout the entire annual hydrological cycle and in the dry season, but there is no consistency in the species that are believed to be presented only in the wet season. The timeline demonstrates a trend in the perception of a general decrease in abundance as one moves toward the upper part of the channel. That is, in Pituna, a smaller number of species were recognized that are believed to have decreased in abundance, and in Wacurabá, it is believed that most of the species have decreased in abundance.

In general, the results of the COIA analyses (Table 3) carried out for the information matrices of all ecological aspects together (Table 4) demonstrate a low correlation between the perception of the three communities. However, the knowledge or perception about these aspects presents greater consistency between the communities of San Javier and Wacurabá (RV = 0.19).

Table 4 List of species with information on different ecological aspects recognized by the three communities

The distribution patterns of the species according to the aquatic ecosystems are not clear, since there are very few species that present agreement in distribution in the three communities. Only for most species of the Characidae family, which includes most of the fish that they define as sardines, is there a concordance between the lower section (Pituna) and the middle section (San Javier) (see Table 4 and Fig. 5 to identify distributions in the different ecosystems according to the drawings made by the participants).

Fig. 5

Drawings of the aquatic ecosystems and associated species: pools (a and b),  rivers and streams (c and d), and rapids (e and f)

The association analyses of the species with a given aquatic ecosystem show that only two species present a high probability of affinity to a single ecosystem; Moenkhausia mikia, to streams (p value: 0.022); and Pimelodus blocchi, to the rivers (p value: 0.014). These results suggest that, according to local perception or knowledge of species distributions, the other species are generalists as they are presented in all ecosystems.

Discussion

We provide information about the diversity, ecological aspects, and the use of fish by the Cubeo indigenous communities from the Cuduyarí River basin. This is the first integrative approach to exploring the traditional knowledge of the Cubeo people inhabitants of the Cuduyarí River basin. The information presented here, because of the workshops, constitutes a comprehensive strategy for citizen participation in local communities, which allows us to learn more about the fish from a blackwater system in an Amazonian pristine area.

Before the CDA’s intervention, fishing areas of the Cubeo people in the Cuduyarí have no restrictions regarding the territory. Nevertheless, according to the Life Plan [26], in other river basins occupied by the Cubeo, there are restrictions to certain areas. Within the Cuduyarí, the lack of restrictions might reflect the loss of traditional knowledge or a consequence of population growth. The latter implies the increase of fishing pressures and fish resources in new areas that must fulfill the increase in demand. Although fishing restrictions do not exist and catches are carried out in all three aquatics ecosystem types (i.e., rivers, lakes, and streams), most of the fish resources consumed by the Cubeo in the Cuduyarí are caught in the main channel. This is the case of the fish resources traded in the main market of the region in Mitú city [14].

The Cubeo reported an ample of traditional gears to catch fish in the different aquatic ecosystems. Previous studies in the region have reported gear selectivity [45] for species that are traded in the ornamental market. Nevertheless, the use of fishing gear, for the most part, does not imply a targeted species and is used in all the ecosystems of the Cuduyarí river basin.

Previous studies have reported lower fish species richness in blackwater systems compared to nutrient-rich ecosystems [18, 20, 46]. However, blackwater has been shown to support relatively diverse ichthyofaunas composed mainly of small fish, adapted to survive in less productive habitats [47, 48]. Therefore, most of the species are small and a few correspond to larger species. The latter is marketed for human consumption locally and in the Mitú city [14]. However, given the decrease in catches that generally occur in the high-water season, smaller species end up being consumed locally because of the decrease in the supply of animal protein. This is reflected in the high number of species consumed in the Cuduyarí communities under study, which in all cases approximates a consumption of 80% of the species that have been identified for the basin.

Overall, species from the Cuduyari’s fish catalog are recognized by the members of the Pituna, San Javier, and Wacurabá communities. Since childhood, Indigenous people have had a close relationship with the different nature components [26, 33]. Particularly fish, because they represent different ecosystem services that provide benefits to the communities and in some cases are part of their cosmogony and mythology [12, 49, 50]. Nevertheless, in the studied Cubeo communities, name designation for each of the species was not evidenced. Instead, although they recognized all species, they have a generic name for different groups of species that have common morphological characteristics.

There is a trend in the community perception of a decrease in fish resources as one moves upstream de Cuduyarí. The differences in abundance of the species could be related to the differences in connectivity along the Cuduyarí River channel. There is less connectivity derived from isolation in the upper areas due to the presence of physical barriers in the form of rapids, and the distance from the main channel of the Vaupés River. These two factors could explain the low species turnover in the upper reaches and a gradient in the structure of fish communities along the Cuduyarí River, as suggested in other areas of the Amazon basin [51,52,53].

Several studies have focused their efforts on documenting fish ecological distributions from the Amazonian aquatic ecosystems. Overall, modern studies in ecology suggested high fish affinities to ecosystem types [54, 55]. From an ethnological perspective, studies of fish distributions in the Colombian Amazon are very scarce [34, 56], where fish ecological distributions are recognized. Our results from the workshops do not show strong ecological linkages of fish from an ethnological perspective. These results might reflect low habitat heterogeneity of the Cuduyarí River that is associated with the relatively small extent of the basin compared to other river basins of the Amazon. Therefore, the fish ecological distributions might be recognized by the Cubeo at a different scales of study. For example, at a smaller scale considering the habitats (e.g., riffles, pools, and beaches).

Most studies focused on the seasonal dynamics of Amazonian aquatic ecosystems support a high species seasonality [57,58,59]. However, most of the species are recognized as present throughout the year by the Cubeo in our study area; there is not a perception of a clear seasonality in fish assemblage structure. This notion of stable fish communities throughout the year is consistent with previous studies in systems with low hydrological connectivity [60, 61] due to geographical isolation as the Cuduyarí system.

Linking environmental characteristics to fish resources is fundamental for the conservation of fish in pristine areas such as the Cuduyarí River basin. The analysis of the association of species with specific ecosystems has great implications from the point of view of conservation since the transformation or degradation (e.g., deforestation and global warming) of these ecosystems can generate local extinctions [62, 63]. Future research in the study area should be focused on evaluating species affinities to certain environmental characteristics to determine the effects of habitat degradation on fish communities. These types of studies might reveal if there is a trend in the decrease in abundance per species, as suggested by the Cubeo people. Furthermore, to evaluate if these changes in fish assemblage structure are due to local drivers or mechanisms operating at bigger scales (e.g., climate change).

It is determined that, despite the importance of fish as a resource, little has been documented about them in the basin [26]. In general, little is known about the spatial and temporal dynamics of communities that are composed of many species that are consumed and traded at a local and regional level. However, fish is a substantial source of animal protein for indigenous people and therefore vital to their nutrition. This suggests that this natural resource is the most heavily harvested for food, mainly in the dry season. However, there is a common interest in capturing fish from the Serrasalmidae, Anostomidae, and Cichlidae families, as has already been recorded [14]. Fifteen species were recognized, classified as abundant, and captured mainly in the river, of which nine species are accessible throughout the year.

The considerable number of species associated with the Amazonian landscapes that provide ES, mostly fish that is intensely exploited [14, 64], is correlated with the high species diversity they support. The ES provides direct or indirect social, economic, and environmental benefits to local populations [65]. Nevertheless, the ES is highly vulnerable to anthropogenic activities and in different regions of the world, its degradation and loss are evident [66,67,68].

The most recognized fisheries in the Colombian Amazon basin correspond to fish species that are associated with whitewater systems such as the Amazon River, Caquetá, and Putumayo rivers [69]. However, in regions where blackwater systems predominate, fishery products are also of great importance and sometimes the only source of animal protein. The consideration of species present in blackwater ecosystems in fisheries management and their recognition as a natural resource of high socio-environmental value would favor a better understanding of the dynamics of these blackwater species, which is essential for their management and conservation. In this sense, it becomes important to promote territorial entities and decentralized national entities, so that they can financially and technically support the implementation of research that contributes to documenting the use and knowledge of natural resources by the indigenous communities, for management and conservation purposes. Furthermore, the information provided is a fundamental input for the formulation of plans and strategies for the management and conservation of this natural resource that in the Pan Amazonia is under threat, due to deforestation, mining, canalization, and overfishing [70].

Conclusions

The present study provides support for the need to emphasize the importance of local fisheries as a source of income and food safety, based on non-commercial species at the Amazon basin scale. Our study also highlights the significance of investigation of local community's interactions with natural resources in remote areas that are prone to major changes due to global environmental changes. The compilation, systematization, and analysis of the information about the knowledge and use of fish are of great relevance to the problems faced by the region, in what has to do with the information gaps about the fish fauna, including its relationship with the Indigenous communities. Considering the increase in both Indigenous and settler settlements, which implies an increase in pressure on the fishing resource, a management plan is needed. These biological, ecological, and ethnological aspects of the problem in the region are associated with each other and are of great relevance for the updating or precision of management plans for natural resources or resources of common use.