Fish of South America

The Amazon basin alone holds more freshwater fish species than the entire Atlantic Ocean. That wealth comes from the sheer size of the network, the stability of the climate and above all the flood cycle: every year the river spreads into the forest for kilometres, opening a temporary larder where hundreds of species feed and breed.

That cycle governs the fishing far more than the calendar. On high water the fish scatter into the flooded forest and become hard to find; on falling water they concentrate in the channels and lagoons, and that is the season that produces.

The coasts offer a sharp contrast. The Pacific, cooled by the Humboldt Current, ranks among the most productive waters on earth, while the tropical Atlantic unrolls thousands of kilometres of beach and estuary.