ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the history of the pirarucu (Arapaima gigas), one of the world’s largest-scaled fish. This fish has played a key role in human settlement in the Amazon, by providing food for indigenous, rural and urban populations. Traditionally captured by harpooning in the late twentieth century, pirarucu populations declined sharply in many areas due to increased fishing. Constraints and bans on fishing were thus enacted, giving rise to new ways of relating with this fish. This chapter approaches transformations in the mutual ontogenesis of the pirarucu fish in the Amazon through a focus on the role and meaning of its aerial breathing in these different circumstances – fishing, sustainable management and aquaculture. The focus on tools, techniques, and apprenticeship allows us to circumvent species-centred or stepwise approaches to the wild-domestic continuum, creating a way of making sense of the multiple and mutual ontogenesis of humans and animals. Associations between Ingold’s thoughts at different times and recent reflections on domestication as a relational and mutual process will be emphasised. Ultimately, the emergence of humans and fish life forms will be considered, rethinking the transformations in the Amazon through an analysis of their breathing.
