The pirarucu is one impressive fish: a huge, thrashing Amazonian monster with red-and-black scales the size of serving spoons.
Still, it’s just a fish. How is it possible it could have gotten British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira murdered?
Police say Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead on June 5 returning from a research trip in Brazil’s far-flung Javari Valley.
At first glance, the jungle-covered region near the Peruvian and Colombian borders seems like one of the last untouched wildernesses, home to a sprawling Indigenous reservation with the biggest concentration of uncontacted tribes on Earth.
But the double murder lay bare growing violence in the region fueled by illegal fishing, logging, mining and drug trafficking.
Fishermen in Atalaia say poaching pirarucu — a tasty, coveted fish that can reach 4.5 meters (nearly 15 feet) and weigh up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) — is a big-money business linked to drug traffickers operating in Peru and Colombia.
A report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature found 83 percent of the illegal fish seized in Brazil from 2012 to 2019 was pirarucu.