Wednesday, July 12, 2000

Loggers chase submerged

fortunes in the Amazon

Underwater logging was unknown in Brazil until the
construction of the huge Tucurui dam two decades ago. Today, nature and
human resourcefulness have created new opportunities in what was once rain
forest.

WHEN Benedito Signey cuts a tree in
the Amazon, it falls up. He's logging a forest at the bottom of this
man-made lake in far northern Brazil.

Spread over 2 875 square kilometres, a timber treasure
worth at least $100 million stands virtually intact waiting to be
harvested, the dead branches of the tallest trees poking through the
surface like thousands of pleading hands.

Dressed in a ragged black rubber wet suit and clutching a
hydraulic chain saw, Signey flops over the side of his boat and swims down
to the submerged forest.

Thirty metres below the surface is a trove of the finest
Amazon hardwoods: Brazil-nut wood, mahogany, ipe, angelim, jatoba and,
more notable, massaranduba, which is so hard that even iron nails bend
when hammered in.

After 15 years underwater, the trees are perfectly
preserved, the wood fibers protected from decomposition by the slimy
organic matter that envelops them.

"The trees are dead, but they have been preserved like a
body in formaldehyde," said Wollmer Silva de Oliveira, a local official
who supervises logging.

A tree is selected and tied with ropes. Signey cuts it,
and the trunk is allowed to slowly rise to the surface. Before the loggers
learned to tie the trunks down, logs would shoot to the surface like
missiles, and some loggers were killed.

Cutting up to 10 trees a day since 1996, underwater
lumberjacks like Signey have harvested barely one percent of the estimated
1,5 million submerged trees. At that pace, it will take 150 years to
harvest the rest.

"There is enough here for my whole life. Perhaps even for
my children," he said.

There wasn't supposed to be a forest under Tucurui Lake.
When the dam was built, a contract to log the area was awarded to a
company run by the son of President Joao Figueiredo, the last of five
right-wing generals who governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

The company was unprepared for the enormous task, though,
and the work was further slowed by corruption -- wood from Tucurui was
traced to Amazon shipyards where it was used to build yachts for
high-ranking officers. When the dam's floodgates closed in 1984, most of
the forest still stood.

Ecologists had warned that the reservoir would alter the
environment and outweigh the dam's benefits. Villages were made
uninhabitable by mosquitos. Rotting organic matter produced greenhouse
gases. Whole species of fish decreased in number or disappeared
altogether.

"The ecosystem was devastated," said Philip Fearnside, a
scientist at the Amazon National Research Institute in Manaus. "The
greenhouse emissions are very substantial and reduce the benefits of the
dam, more than authorities want to recognise."

For the government, it was an acceptable price to develop
the eastern Amazon. The 4 325-megawatt Tucurui hydroelectric plant not
only boosted the area's export-oriented aluminum industry but also
provided energy to nearly every village in the sparsely populated region.
The government estimates Tucurui has saved Brazil $30 billion in oil
imports alone.

And the region slowly adapted to the dam. The lake proved
to be an ideal habitat for the tucunare, a kind of red snapper whose juicy
meat and fighting disposition make it a favourite food and game
fish.

Feeding on smaller fish, tucunare became king of the lake.
Thousands of fishermen flocked from around the region, and fishing became
a major business. From a forgotten riverside town of 3 000 people, Tucurui
grew into an economic hub of 60 000.

"It was a biological revolution that took place," said
Takashi Hatanaka, a biologist with the dam's environmental programme. "The
different bedsoil boosted life among small fish, which in turn lured
tucunare. A life cycle began."

Signey moved to Tucurui four years ago when the tucunare
boom was taking off, but he soon saw he could earn more money
logging.

Today he supports his wife and two children on monthly pay
of 590 reals, or about $330 a good salary in a region where few
people earn even the minimum wage of $84.

But the future is uncertain for the logging divers.

Big companies are taking an interest in the submerged
timber since cutting logs right on the water can save at least 25 percent
in transportation costs. And they wouldn't have to deal with the scrutiny
of environmental groups since they would be exploiting an already dead
forest.

Sulpam Madeiras Ltda, one of four timber companies
operating on the lake, last year began a joint venture with Aquatic
Cellulose International Corp of British Columbia, which is experienced in
mechanised underwater logging.

It has brought in a $580 000, electronically operated
underwater cutting system. It is expected to start working this month and
cut at least three times more trees.

The machine has "arms" equipped with sonar sensors that
embrace a tree, cut it with a chain saw and drag it to the surface. It
worked well off the Canadian coast recovering logs already cut, but that
area was far smaller than Tucurui.

"Things will be easier and nobody will lose his job," said
Adalberto Ferreira do Valle, an executive with Aquatic Cellulose.

Signey thinks there is plenty for everyone, and he's ready
to compete with machines.

"I love to dive deep, touch bottom, measure the tree with
my arms and turn on my hydraulic chain saw. In three to five minutes, zazz
there goes the tree to the surface," he says. "I want to see a
machine do all that!" Sapa-AP

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CHAIN SAWING HARDWOODS: Workers cut the top of a tree
to mark it for underwater loggers to cut at the Tucurui dam in the Amazon
jungle about 2 500 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro. Thirty metres below
the surface of the dam sits a treasure trove of the finest Amazon
hardwoods -- Brazil-nut wood, mahogony and native species such as ipe,
angelim and jatoba. (AP)