The day is relaxed and without worries, just how Osmar Lisboa da Silva likes it.

As the sunlight starts to kiss the starboard side of Osmar’s boat the Xispita, the captain and his crew prepare to set sail. Just before leaving the port, Captain Osmar gives one last piece of advice:

“We don’t need to hurry,” Captain Osmar says in his raspy voice. “This day doesn’t need any hurry.”

When the sun’s rays inch closer to the flapping green and yellow Brazilian flag positioned at the middle of the boat, Captain Osmar signals for his crew to start the motor. This captain doesn’t fit the stereotype of a traditional captain. He doesn’t command a fleet of dozens of ships nor does his boat merit any notoriety. His crew consists of him and his son, and the Xispita is a 30-foot dilapidated craft built by his own hands. They come from humble origins and are expected to have just as humble endings.

This Tuesday is the same as any other day for Osmar. He wakes at 5 a.m., pulls on his black rubber boots and walks across the dirt road to the Guaíba River to drink his morning coffee on his boat. As he spots his 30-year-old son Leandro walk to the river, Osmar slips on his brown wool blazer.

“Time to go to work,” he says.

Osmar is a fisherman by necessity and by choice. His living is the river and its piava and dourado fish, two popular fish in Brazil. Whatever he catches and whatever he sells become his profit. His education is limited to the second grade, slashing his choices of occupation. He watched his grandfather make a living as a fisherman and became his own father’s crew when he was younger. Osmar, the eldest of 14 children, became his father’s prodigy. His rough, dark hands have been molded to catch and slice fish. His piercing blue eyes have been trained to spot all types of fish, no matter what season. He knows no other way to live. Without the river or fish, Osmar would have no life.

It’s easy to imagine Osmar being a childhood friend waiting at the neighborhood playground. His nonstop dizzying motion and mischievous smile give every hint that a 10-year-old inside of him is waiting for a game of tag. His eyes, whose dark pupils seem to swallow his icy blue eyes, get big and his hands flail when he tells a story. Today he can barely contain his excitement in his lean 5-foot frame when telling his latest fishing adventure. But the hard wrinkles that indent the corners of his eyes and apples of his cheeks, and the continuous wisdom of his rough, meticulous hands tell us that the 10-year-old has left Osmar many years ago. The dark patches of skin that dot Osmar’s arms and face and the seemingly endless tales of life on the river spur questions of not only how old he is, but how much longer he will live. The 67-year-old face that looks at the river has no apparent worries. He just wants to fish.

Osmar lives life the way many of the people on Ilha da Pintada live it—painstakingly modest and poor, at best. He is one of the handful of pescadores on his island, people for whom fishing is more than just a living. It is living by fishing.

On the small island of Ilha da Pintada, or Painted Island, the pescadores and their neighbors live in tiny, shed-like houses where two and sometimes three families live together. Their poor living conditions permeate through most of the island. The unpaved roads that surround the island dirty the residents’ bare feet and the seemingly infinite number of undomesticated dogs and chickens keep the city noisy.

Ilha da Pintada draws its name from the legend of a local woman enticing men onto the island with her heavy bright red lipstick. It is far from the beachy postcards and cosmopolitan cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro most foreigners see. Pescadores make no more than the equivalent of $200 US a month to support their families. Most have no car, no home phone and no luxuries. Osmar is still surprised to see a car driving on his street.

Today Osmar is wearing layered clothing to combat the brisk morning chill. The first layer is a faded blue T-shirt topped by a rusty brown thin, short-sleeved sweater with cream stripes. The sweater looks well-worn with the threads on the back at the brink of ripping. Over the sweater Osmar wears his coffee-colored plaid wool blazer that extend past knees. His pants are loose, blue cotton trousers too big and too long for his compact body. He missed a loop pulling his black belt through the back of his trousers. That has the belt completely off track, sliding up and down his waist as Osmar bends down to wipe off the water that occasionally splashes onto his boot.

Osmar’s destination is Lagoa dos Patos on the Guaíba River, a half-hour boat trip from his house. He left four or five nets cast yesterday and wants to pull them from the water today. On the surface, it looks as though Osmar’s work could be done by anyone, neither too arduous or difficult. He just cast nets over the river one day, pulls them out of the water the next day and scales the fish he catches. But the surface description cannot account for the permanently engraved, deep wrinkles of his face.

With Leandro in the cabin steering the boat, Osmar stands on the front deck, scanning the river for the markers he placed yesterday. The water has become a little more unstable and choppy, but Osmar’s balance is unphased. He stands straight up, not bothered by the tumble of the water.

With his right hand halfway inside the front pocket of his blazer, he points ahead with his left hand.

“There!,” he yells back to Leandro, still pointing ahead. “There’s the marker!”

The marker, an empty liter Coke bottle about 100 yards away, bobs its red cap above the water and Leandro heads straight for it. As they near the marker, Osmar spots a fellow pescador in his boat pulling a bulky net onto the boat. Osmar waves at the man, smiles and gives him a thumbs-up sign.

“I know him,” Osmar says, still smiling. "There are some bad fishermen on this island and he’s not one of them.”

Fishing always involves competition, especially for the pescadores who depend on it. If Osmar cannot haul in a catch, someone else will. Osmar’s 5 a.m. rise is not merely one that he is accustomed to, it is one that he must live by. The earlier he wakes, the greater his chances are of beating his competitors to the fish.

Some pescadores go so far as cutting others’ nets to sabotage their catch, Osmar says. He turns around and points to his left at Damião, another local pescador who cut almost all of Osmar's nets five years ago.

“People are jealous of me, but I don’t know why,” Osmar confesses, dumbfounded. “I never thought of doing anything bad to somebody. If I would, I would be robbed.”

As Leandro pulls within 10 yards of the marker, his father climbs out of the Xispita and into the attached canoe. Leandro, still inside the boat, turns off the motor and looks around the main compartment for any necessary supplies. He silently checks the back corner, where the sea-blue metal walls wear the decorations of rust and chipped paint. He then scans the space above the steer. Nothing is there but a small silver pendant of the Virgin Mary that overlooks every turn the driver makes.

Next, Leandro checks the boat’s other compartment. He picks up the jackets and sweaters that could only fit Osmar's small frame and looks underneath the two benches it was thrown on. The benches, which run alongside the sea-blue walls of the compartment, hit up against the red lifesaver pinned to the back wall. Leandro makes one last check below the lifesaver which has "Xispita" and "POA," the abbreviation of Porto Alegre, written across it in yellow.

The crew brought everything, Leandro reports.

"Barco lindo," Osmar whispers, a comment on the beauty of his boat as he watches his son step from it into the canoe.

The canoe, large enough to be Osmar’s work space but not roomy enough to hold more than three people, transports the two-man crew to the markers and net. Osmar takes the helm with Leandro sitting behind him and grabs the two long wooden oars to begin rowing. His stature is straight, with one foot in front of the other. His back foot holds him steady as he pushes his entire weight forward to accelerate the canoe. His small 5-foot frame seems to find an unknown source to power the steady pace of the canoe. With each thrust of his body and arms, Osmar heaves the canoe closer to the markers. His lips begin to tighten and his brow crinkles with every push of his arms and every effort of his legs. Each time he pushes the oars forward, he exhales. Each time he retracts the oars, he inhales. The rhythm is constant until he reaches the markers.

“I’m 67, but I am still strong,” Osmar boasts, pointing at his bicep.

Once they get to their first marker, Leandro drops a miniature steel anchor into the water. As his son lowers the anchor, Osmar begins to pull the nearly 50-foot long nylon net attached to the marker out of the water. The net does not seem to have an end. Osmar and eventually Leandro keeps pulling the net into the canoe, hoping to spot a fish on the way. Finally, Osmar hauls in a foot-long piava fish hooked onto the net. With his right hand still holding onto the net, Osmar casually unhooks the piava’s teeth from the net with his left hand and  tosses it into the bin next to his feet. When he finishes, he continues to pull up the net again.

Both men work in joint silence. Osmar has his side of the net and Leandro has his. The two work knowing each other’s moves. Leandro hardly needs to look up at Osmar to see his father’s progress. Both concentrate on their own hands and their own side. The only time Osmar speaks is to talk to the fish. He sees the fish twist and jump once it lands inside the bin, gasping for the water. After a few more twists and jumps, it pops outside of the bin onto the canoe floor.

“Pare, pare,” Osmar says to the fish, calmly asking it to stop moving.

He picks up one fish and examines its mouth like a child examining the bottom of a turtle.

“This one has teeth like a child,” he jokes.

This net is successful. They hauled in 10 piava fish with their first net and are about to move on to their next. They carefully lower the net back into the river again, marking its placement with the same empty Coke bottle to find tomorrow.

After they finish clearing their nets, it’s time to prepare the fish for sale. Still in the canoe, both men scale and gut the fish. Osmar uses the dull side of his knife, rapidly waving it back and forth to rip the scales from the fish’s flesh. On the opposite side of the canoe, Leandro is doing the same. Loose scales fly all over the canoe. Osmar’s hands are so plastered in the white scales that they appear to be covered by gloves. The canoe floor looks like the autumn ground masked by fallen dogwood petals. Pretty soon, the entire canoe floor has a sheet of scales covering it.

As he slices a bulky fish, he looks up at his son, holds the fish in the air and exclaims, “That’s one fat fish!”

This Tuesday is no different than any other day. They all start and end the same.

“For me, there is no Sunday, no anything,” he explains.

His low-wage job is one that Osmar would never chose for his children. He never wanted his two eldest daughters or even Leandro to make a living being a pescador.

“I can live on this salary,” he declares. “But it’s hard for others to.”

The best memories Osmar has on the water are not his own. Instead, his best memories are of his two daughters fishing with him when they were younger.

“The feeling that I have remembering those times is indescribable,” he laments. “I remember those times with my daughters and I didn’t have a camera to photograph those moments with my family.”

“I don’t remember some things, like names and birthdays, but I will never forget anything about the river and fishing.”

The day is never long enough for Osmar and the rest of the pescadores of Ilha da Pintada. The fish they catch for the day are never quite adequate, their need for time on the water never fully satisfied. Life is not picturesque for Osmar, nor can he expect it to get any better. The only thing he and the other pescadores can do before they go to bed is pray for God to watch over them and a good day of fishing tomorrow.