In an effort to protect Amazon pink dolphins, Brazil's Fishing and Aquaculture Ministry announced Tuesday that it is temporarily banning the fishing of piracatinga, a species of catfish commonly baited with dolphin flesh.

According to Ultimo Valadares, a spokesman for the Ministry, the Brazilian government is working on a five-year temporary prohibition of piracatinga fishing. It will likely begin early 2015.

"That should give us enough time to find an alternative bait for the piracatinga," Valadares said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Activists say the change was imperative.

Nivia de Campo, who is the president of an environmental activist group in Amazonas, a Brazilian jungle state, studies mammals in the Mamiraua Reserve, where she says over 15,000 Amazon pink dolphins are killed every year. The practice of using the creatures for catfish bait began in 2000, according to de Campo, and since then the number of dolphins in the Mamiraua Reserve has dropped around 10 percent annually.

"If nothing is done to stop the killing, it will become extinct," de Campo told AP. "That is why the moratorium is excellent news. It will allow us to discover other baits fishermen can and continue earning money selling piracatinga."

Currently, the Mamiraua Reserve has about 13,000 dolphins. Without the ban, that number could continue to dwindle, however, as de Campo says that Colombia has a big market for piracatinga. In addition, demand for the "water vulture," as it is nicknamed for its consumption of decomposing river matter, puts the Amazon caiman, whose flesh is also used for bait, at risk.

The Amazon pink dolphin, also known as the Amazon river dolphin, has been a creature associated with myth and admiration for centuries, as AP reports. One legend has it that the dolphins like to turn into men at night, seduce women on land and then return to the water. Some think it is bad luck to kill an Amazon pink dolphin.
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