SEAFOODS OF BRAZIL - Amazonian River Prawn (Camarão Regional)

Amazonian river prawn

Amidst the bounty of strange and unusual fish and shellfish to be found in the stalls and boxes of the Ver-o-Peso Market in the Amazonian city of Belém, Brazil, are woven baskets of minute pink shrimp that come from the waters of the many backwaters of the Amazon River estuary. These small crustaceans are sold peeled or unpeeled; raw, cooked, dried or smoked; or still merrily swimming about in buckets.

They're known to the shoppers who wander the aisles of Ver-o-Peso as camarão regional, which would properly be regional shrimp in English. However, this little creature, with a scientific name (Machrobrachium amazonium) longer than it is, goes by the very accurate name Amazonian river prawn in our language.

Ribeirinho house

These shrimp live in the muddy waters of the thousands of small streams and rivers that feed into the main flow of the Amazon, In these calm waters, they are either caught in traps or farmed in large pens by those who live on the banks of the  river - people known as ribeirinhos. The ribeirinhos live a largely aquatic life, and depending on the rivers for water, food and transportation. The tides near the mouth of the Amazon are among the largest on Earth, with a daily variance of up to 12 feet (4 meters), and consequently the ribeirinhos dwell in small wooden houses on stilts, perched precariously above the high-water mark. Until recently self-sufficient in almost all things, they are only know entering into the economy, and trading in Amazonian river prawns in the only source of income for many of them.

A Brazilian social and educational NGO named Fase has been working with these riverside communities to develop a viable and sustainable shrimp fishery in the region. As the project leader explains in the introduction to the group's report on the project:

"In the estuary of the the Amazon River...the rural communities face a high degree of isolation. Travel from one community to another is only possible by boat or canoe, and travel from one community to another can take upwards of three hours. It is in this region, specifically in the municipality of  Gurupá, PA that the Ilha das Cinzas [site of the project] is located...A trip to the city of Gurupá itself takes 15 to 18 hours. The population of the entire municipality is twenty-six thousand (two thousand families), the majority of whom are ribeirinhos."

Thanks to Fase's project, over the six-year development period of the shrimp fishery among the ribeirinhos their average monthly income per family rose from R$128 (USD $80) to R$310 (USD $196). The fishery is now sustainable, and at least for the time being can meet the demand for Amazonian river prawns at the market of Ver-o-Peso, in the restaurants of Belém and other cities along the Amazon. Thanks to the efforts of some chef-advocates for Amazonian food, the little camarão regional is also beginning to show up in restaurants farther afield, in places like Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, or Belo Horizonte. Either frozen or dried and smoked for transportion, the sweet flesh of these little shrimps is becoming valued throughout Brazil.

There's no export market currently for these shrimp, but with increased cultivation and proper conservation, there's no reason the camarão regional  couldn't move beyond Brazilian shores and become appreciated elsewhere in our increasinly connected world. That wouldn't be a bad thing, economically, for the ribeirinhos of the Amazon estuary. Nor for the gustatory experience of those who learn to appreciate their unique taste.

On the Road - Maranhão (Pt. 13) - Eating Sawfish (Peixe Serra)

When in São Luís recently I had a meal at the central market, the Mercado da Praia Grande. In addition to stands selling fruits and vegetables, arts and crafts and local food products, the circular market boasts a number of small restaurants in its central core. The atrium of the market has a bandstand with live music, a number of plastic tables and chairs, and one can order a meal from any of the restaurant stalls. We visited about 2 pm on a very busy and lively Saturday afternoon, and the market was humming with activity. There was a local band playing forró, a traditional northeastern dance style of music, there was plenty of icy beer being served, and there was lots of food. Some people were there to drink beer and chat, some were there to dance, and some to eat a meal.

Among the many choices of restaurant, we picked one named Deco's at random, basically. On their menu they listed peixe serra, which in English means sawfish. I had never seen this fish on a menu before, and vaguely remembered the fish from picture books I had as a kid. Large, like a swordfish but with a serrated saw for a snout instead of a sword. I do like swordfish and so decided to try it. It came to the table in the form of steaks, fried, accompanied by rice, beans, spaghetti and a salad. It was delicious - the meat was flavorful and moist, and meaty. It reminded me very much of shark or swordfish. I thought it was a great meal, and the market a great experience.

It was only when I returned home to Fortaleza and did some research in preparation for this article that I realized, to my horror, that I'd committed an ecological crime by choosing saw fish for my lunch. I learned that the saw fish is, in fact, a type of ray, and that it is critically endangered. According to the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) the species is in danger of imminent extinction, and the only legal international trade in this fish involves live specimens being sent to aquaria for conservation purposes. There is no legal fishery in any country, including Brazil. Yikes! Suddenly that delicious fish steak in São Luís' market gained a much more sinister flavor, and what I learned tainted my memory of the meal. Certainly, the first saw fish meal I'd ever eaten would also be my last.

There's a moral to this tale, I think. Each of us is responsible for the choices we make when we look at a menu. Overfishing is a world-wide problem, and by eating fish from non-sustainable fisheries, we all become a part of that problem. I certainly couldn't choke down another piece of saw fish, ever. Although readers of this blog may never encounter sawfish on a menu, they've all now been advised. Don't eat it. And learn which fish are ecologically sound to eat. A good place to start is here.

(UPDATE 22DEC: It appears that this fish I ate in São Luís wasn't, in fact, the endangered sawfish. Click on the comments to this posting to read more about this. However, what I wrote above about the consumer's responsibility in choosing what species of fish to eat is still valid.)

The Story of Amma Chocolate

Amma Chocolate is quickly becoming the chocolate-of-the-moment here in Brazil and the story of the company makes a very interesting, very 21st century story. In a recent blind tasting sponsored by one of Brazil's largest food and wine magazines, Amma's 70% cocoa chocolate bar beat out such heavyweights of the chocolate world as Lindt, Nestlé and Valrhona. (Click here to read the results of the blind tasting). The very short history of this young company, its stated mission and the philosophies of its owners are reflections of the ways many in the contemporary world of food are looking at what we eat today and what we plan to eat in the future.

Diego Badaró is a fifth-generation cacau planter from the southern part of Bahia state in northeastern Brazil. This area is the historic center of cacau cultivation in Brazil and is home to a large percentage of what's left of the Mata Atlantica, Brazil's largely deforested coastal rain forest. Badaró is passionate about growing the best possible cacau beans for chocolate production and about preserving and fostering the rain forest which is the cacau trees natural habitat. Sometime in 2007 he sent a box of samples of his cacau beans, unsolicited, to Frederick Schilling, the founder and CEO of Dagoba Organic Chocolate, the largest producer and vendor of high-quality organic chocolate in the USA. Schilling was so impressed by the product that within less than a month he was in Brazil to meet Badaró . Realizing that their goals were remarkable similar, the two men decided to start a joint venture in Brazil to produce and market high-quality organic chocolate, sustainable grown.

Badaró (left) and Schilling (right)

This joint venture became Amma Chocolate, and today the company has established a small but very creditable niche in Brazil's booming chocolate market. Their distribution is still very limited and their products can only be found in the best chocolate shops in Brazil's larger metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, Fortaleza, my Brazilian hometown doesn't have a local distributor yet, so I will have to wait for my next visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brasília or Salvador to sample an Amma chocolate bar. It's an experience I'll be looking forward to.

Amma has an excellent website detailing their products and the philosophy behind the company. It is in Portuguese only, but has some great photos and links to some English-language articles on the company. It can be found by clicking here.

Green Crab Iniative - Selo Caranguejo Verde

Last year, Flavors of Brazil wrote about the Thursday-night-ritual crab fest here in Fortaleza, my Brazilian home town. Every Thursday night here in Fortaleza, many thousands of locals and tourists head to outdoor bars and restaurants along the city's seafront and beaches and eat many more thousands of crabs. (Click here for more on Fortaleza's Thursday night crab fest).

Although the crabs become dinner here in Fortaleza, they are not harvested locally. Rather, 95% of the crabs eaten in Fortaleza, according to a recent article in the Jornal do Brasil, come from the neighboring states of Piauí and Maranhão - specifically from the mangrove swamps in the delta of the Parnaíba River, the only river delta in the Americas that terminates in the open ocean. There has recently been a lot of concern about the long-term sustainability of that crab fishery, an important source of income for inhabitants of the region.

Recently an awareness and certification campaign called "Selo Caranguejo Verde" was announced in Fortaleza, thanks to the efforts of Jefferson Legal, a fisheries researcher for EMBRAPA, the Brazilian national agriculture and pisciculture organization, in cooperation with Bernard Twardy, executive chef of the Beach Park Hotel, just outside Fortaleza. This initiative is aimed at raising public awareness of the sustainability issues involved with the crab fishery, and at promoting the sale of sustainable, or "green", crabs in Fortaleza's bars and restaurants.


The iniative has a two-pronged approach. First, making the dining public aware of what makes a crab "green", and second, providing those restaurants that only source sustainable crabs with a seal of certification that they can post on walls, menus and in advertisement. The hope is that the public will begin to favor those restaurants that serve green crabs, which will help ensure the long-term sustainability of the crab fishery.


Sr. Legal developed a protocol and a technique for the capture, handling, storage, and transport of crabs that he says will reduce the mortality rate of the harvest from the current 25-55% to a much more sustainable 5%. After extensive testing, Legal developed a system of stocking and transporting the crabs, without binding their claws, in large plastic containers. In these containers, the crabs are laid between sheets of foam rubber which has been moistened with water from their usual habitat, the mangrove swamps of the river delta. Protected by the foam rubber, and kept moist by the water, the survival rate of crabs improves enormously.

Each year a thousand tons of crabs, about 6 million individual crabs, make their way to market in Fortaleza, and the crab fishery which furnishes them provides the primary source of income to almost 5000 people in Piauí and Maranhão. If the Green Crab Initiative can help to make this fishery sustainable in the long run, it will not only preserve crab stocks and aid the economy in the areas in which the crabs are harvested, it will ensure the continued existence of Fortaleza's Thursday night crab fest.