Edited by Jennifer Sills

Brazilian aquatic
biodiversity in peril

IMAGES: (LEFT) WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; ( RIGHT) KUN-YONG KIM, P.HD.

THE ONGOING FISCAL and political crisis

in Brazil has already caused deep cuts

to science and education (Fiscal crisis
has Brazilian scientists scrambling, H.
Escobar, In Depth, 28 August, p. 909), and
now the environment is in the crosshairs.
On 2 October, the Federal Government
announced the closing of eight executive cabinets, including the Ministry of
Fisheries, which was absorbed by the
Ministry of Agriculture. Shortly afterward,
on 9 October, a joint act of the Ministries
of Agriculture and the Environment
suspended the seasonal fishing closures
that protect the spawning fish of several
commercially and ecologically important
species (1).
Without spawning closures, fishing is
now allowed during the annual spawning
migration of all freshwater species from six
major hydrographic basins, including the
Amazon, as well as during the reproductive season of several marine fishes and
invertebrates. This decision was made in
an effort to cut costs; an unknown percentage of approximately one million fishers
were illegally receiving unemployment
benefits during the closure season (2).
Regional fisheries management councils,
whose immediate future is now uncertain
given the current political turmoil, will
review the rules for fisheries closures, and
the Ministry of Agriculture will reissue
benefits for fishers by 9 February 2016.
Brazilian aquatic biodiversity will suffer
from more than the suspension of spawning season closures. The fast-growing
industrial lobby and misguided government actions have recently overthrown the
Brazilian Red List of threatened species
(3). Hundreds of hydroelectric dams are
under construction or planned in several
major river basins, severely threatening migratory fish species and the South
American biota as a whole (4). Because
of a series of controversial Acts, boats up
to 20 tons are now considered artisanal
vessels, and specific labor benefits for true
traditional fishers have been cut, increasing their historical marginalization (5). On
15 October, high-level government officials
and industrial fleet syndicate representatives were arrested for involvement in a
bribery scheme to grant industrial fishing

permits to companies that were fishing

illegally, resulting in an estimated environmental loss of about US$365 million
(6). Because fishers will no longer receive
unemployment benefits, a growth on
fishing efforts to maintain their income is
predicted, hastening the demise of stocks
that are already at the brink of collapse.
The effect on the environment will be difficult to track, given the complete absence
of fisheries statistics in Brazil (3).
Brazil is the first signatory of the
Convention on Biological Diversity
and allegedly endorses both the Food

and Agriculture Organizations Code of

Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and
the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing
Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the
Context of Food Security and Poverty
Eradication. Instead of loosening the
legal fisheries management framework
to ameliorate a never-ending fiscal crisis,
Brazil needs to improve fisheries and
environmental management effectiveness.
Baseline measures include the reestablishment of spawning closures, fisheries
statistics, independent stock assessments,
on-board scientific observer programs,

LIFE IN SCIENCE

Waste not, want not: Recycled science art

he trash can in my well-equipped Yale laboratory was overflowing with used

gloves, tubes, and plastic tip boxes. As I neatly folded my own gloves and placed
them in my drawer, I thought about how my experiences in my home of Jordan
gave me a different perspective than that of many of my lab mates. Jordans
growing population, undergoing rapid modernization, generates an overwhelming volume of solid waste, and municipalities cannot afford modern solid waste
collection, recycling, or successful landfill management. Solid waste mismanagement
leads to public health risks. Meanwhile, purchasing lab consumables and chemicals is
complicated by terrible bureaucracy in procurement and management of grants (1).
In Jordan, we would fight over
a box of gloves.
I dreamed about taking all
the waste home to Jordan to
reuse, but I couldnt possibly
fit it all in my luggage. Still,
I couldnt bear to throw my
materials away. One day, while
staring at a pile of crinkled
gloves, an idea occurred to me.
Each glove looked like a cell.
Together, they could form a
picture of a stem cell colony.
Inspired to create a piece of
recycled science art, I started
a campaign to collect used
gloves, tip boxes, and tubes
(those that were not a biohazard, of course) all across the lab. The other members of
my lab started collecting as well. The night before I left Yale to return to Jordan, my
daughter and I spent all night creating our masterpiece, depicting a stem cell colony
of mouse embryonic fibroblasts. We presented it to my lab group as a gift before leaving. Everyone loved it! One lab member even added a purple glove to represent a
mycoplasma contaminating the colony.
Once I returned to my country, I found a way to continue my artistic recycling
efforts. When I teach cell biology to undergraduate students, I require them to create
a piece of art from recycled material that represents a scientific concept. Perhaps we
can help alleviate the growing solid waste problems in Jordan if we all embrace the
idea that one scientists trash can be another scientists treasure.
Rana Dajani
Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan. E-mail: rdajani@hu.edu.jo
REFERENCE

1. MuslimScience, Nature 477, 7 (2011).

SCIENCE sciencemag.org

27 NOVEMBER 2015 VOL 350 ISSUE 6264

Published by AAAS

1043

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 26, 2015

LET TERS

INSIGHTS | L E T T E R S

and the effective operation of subnational

fisheries management councils.
Hudson T. Pinheiro,1,2* Fabio Di Dario,3
Leopoldo C. Gerhardinger,4 Marcelo R. S.
de Melo,5 Rodrigo L. de Moura,6 Roberto
E. Reis,7 Fbio Vieira,8 Jansen Zuanon,9
Luiz A. Rocha1
1

Institute of Biodiversity Science and Sustainability,

California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA
94118, USA. 2Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa
Cruz, CA 95060, USA. 3NUPEM, Universidade Federal
do Rio de Janeiro, 27910-970, Maca, RJ, Brazil/
SAIAB, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa. 4University
of the Region of Joinville, 89240-000, So Francisco
do Sul, SC, Brazil. 5Departamento de Oceanografa
Biolgica, Instituto Oceanogrfco, Universidade
de So Paulo, 05508-120, So Paulo, SP, Brazil.
6
Instituto de Biologia and SAGE/COPPE, Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 21944-970, Rio de Janeiro,
RJ, Brazil. 7PUCRS, Faculdade de Biocincias,
Laboratory of Vertebrate Systematics, 90619-900,
Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. 8Centro de Transposio
de Peixes/Coleo de Peixes, Universidade Federal
de Minas Gerais, 31270-901 Belo Horizonte, MG,
Brazil. 9Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amaznia,
Manaus, Amaznas, Brazil.
*Corresponding author.
E-mail: htpinheiro@gmail.com
REFERENCES

1. Brazil, Ministrio da Agricultura, Pecuria e

Abastecimento e Ministrio do Meio Ambiente, Portaria
N 192 de 5 de outubro de 2015, Dirio Oficial da Unio
Seo 1, 194 (9 October 2015).

2. Brazil, Ministrio da Agricultura, Pecuria e Abastecimento,

Portaria suspende seguro defeso por at 120 dias (www.
agricultura.gov.br/comunicacao/noticias/2015/10/
portaria-suspende-seguro-defeso-por-ate-120-dias) [in
Portuguese].
3. F. Di Dario et al., Science 347, 1079 (2015).
4. M. Benchimol, C. A. Peres, PLOS ONE 10, e0129818 (31
March 2015).
5. Brazil, Presidncia da Repblica, Decreto n 8.467 de 31 de
maro de 2015; 194 da Independncia e 127 da Repblica
(2015).
6. G. Mascarenhas, Folha de So Paulo (15
October 2015); http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/
poder/2015/10/1694234-operacao-da-pf-miravenda-ilegal-de-documentos-emitidos-por-ministerio.
shtml [in Portuguese].

Nurturing the
microbiome field
THE UNIFIED MICROBIOME Initiative

Consortiums desire to organize research

efforts across disciplinary and geopolitical
boundaries is much needed (A unified initiative to harness Earths microbiomes, A.
P. Alivisatos et al., Policy Forum, 30 October,
p. 507; published online 28 October 2015).
Previous Big Science efforts have had a
top-down focus: Large amounts of money
are invested in the ideas of a small number

Published by AAAS

of individuals. For the microbiome project,

I would propose a bottom-up approach, in
which a broad vision is outlined and then as
many researchers as possible address those
concepts in their biological systems with
their own talents and research networks.
Regardless of the structure of the initiative, this field belongs to its researchers,
and we must nurture it to ensure continued funding and public interest. We must
communicate our efforts to do robust
hypothesis-driven research as well as the
importance of descriptive studies that
contribute to our still-incomplete census.
The Consortium and the rest of us must
lead by example in terms of transparency,
robust methods, pre- and post-publication
peer review, and acknowledgment of negative results. As much as we are enthusiastic
about the role of the microbiome, we must
also realize that it is not responsible for
everything. It is exciting to see the nucleus
of a grand vision for the field, but we must
make the fundamentals of the scientific
method central to our mission.
Patrick Schloss
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor,
MI 48109, USA. E-mail: pschloss@umich.edu