Bomb fishing in Itaparica.

We´re planting here the seeds of environmental awareness , focusing on the children of this community. We dedicated our first floor at home to a Library for them. Over 300 children (with Library ID card) come here for help with their school work and to pick up books to take home. We believe these children (soon to be adults) will change the negative behaviour towards Nature so common here, and will educate their relatives at home. We also go to schools and talk to teachers how to focus on environmental subjects, using videos and plays to promote our message. We’ve been having visits from other NGOs in Bahia in order to coordinate a similar project of a library for kids in their native regions www.globalgarbage.org Unfortunately, environmental education is still not a priority in Brazil. We also plan to spread to the community the recycling project we have at home. This is our Environmental Educators work.

The catch.

As Environmentalists, dealing with the adults and the authorities, we had quite an improvement since we pressed most public authorities to have a more competent response to this crime, the bomb fishing, and it all came to a positive stage when the main criminals, Fifiu and his wife (our neighbours) were arrested last April. Since then, we had a good answer from Nature, bringing back a dolphin family (not seen since 1989) and the fish coming closer and closer. The traditional old habit of using a small net at the beach to catch some of the fish soal is back.

Our main goal is to have our own transportation on water, to be able to patrol and monitoring the mangrove around, a huge area with infinite ‘ escape streams’ , being used by Nature aggressors who do not respect their legacy for future generations. The work with other NGOs is also connected with the shrimp aquaculture new wave of greed happening all over the Brazilian coast. Soon as the bomb fishing has stopped here, we’ll have the shrimp aquaculture business willing to kill the mangroves around us. A group of powerful businessmen are looking for places like this to plant their ‘immediate profit Nature destroyer’ business. Southern Bahia, a small village, Caravelas is now suffering their attack, jeopardizing marine life on one of the most protected places in Brazil: Arquipelago of Abrolhos.

We will work hard to prevent the same attack here.