Nicholas Winterle Daudt

The Projeto de Monitoramento de Praias (PMPs) in Brazil is the world’s largest marine tetrapod stranding monitoring program, covering over 3000 km of coastline. PMPs are organized as four monitoring programs, executed by a number of institutions, with the primary aim of assessing possible impacts of the oil and gas industry (O&G) on marine tetrapods. Since 2015, data recorded by all PMPs have been stored in a single database with public access. We undertook a literature review to gather all peer-reviewed publications from 2010-2023 using data from PMPs. We summarized 139 publications to investigate: (i) temporal trends in the number of publications; (ii) subject areas from those publications; (iii) taxonomic groups and species studied; (iv) the participation of non-executing institutions based on author affiliations. In addition, we explored whether species ranked higher in conservation assessments were more represented in the publications. Overall, the PMPs have a high number of publications considering their relatively recent implementation when compared to longer stranding monitoring programs. The open-access nature of the PMP database seems to be a catalyst for research, including one-third of publications being authored only by non-executing institutions. The program with the most publications was the PMP-BS (Bacia de Santos), which may result from a larger monitored area, higher numbers of strandings and research institutions than other monitoring programs, and higher mortality due to higher human density. The number of publications was similar across taxonomic groups (sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals), which together studied 61 species. Notably, the studies addressed a variety of topics, suggesting that PMPs contribute not only to monitor the impacts of the O&G, but also to increase our understanding of the distribution, ecology, and health of several species. Therefore, continuing PMPs is essential to monitor long-term trends, inform strategies, and support effective management of marine tetrapods.

We describe the temporal and spatial patterns of three tetrapod groups (sea turtles, seabirds, and cetaceans) stranded in southeast Brazil, based on daily beach surveys of over >800 km of coastline between 2015 and 2020. Patterns were analysed by stranding rates (individuals/1000 km of coastline) of groups and species; for the 14 most numerous species, we also fitted generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape (GAMLSS) using temporal and spatial explanatory variables. We recorded 53850 animals (22738 sea turtles, 28155 birds, and 2957 cetaceans) of 78 species. Higher stranding numbers were observed during winter/spring for all groups, and could be an effect of a higher occurrence/abundance at the region, driven by productive waters, jointly with higher stranding probabilities due to stronger drifting forces. Most modelled species showed temporal and spatial stranding patterns most likely related to their general occurrence/abundance cycles in southeast Brazil, but for Caretta caretta, Chelonia mydas, Pontoporia blainvillei, and Sotalia guianensis local mortality factors may be influencing stranding numbers. By using intensive, wide ranging beach surveys and including survey effort in the analysis, we provide a comprehensive baseline for stranding numbers in the region, and open a pathway for future hypothesis-testing studies to investigate its drivers.

Here, we present a framework for a beach litter monitoring process, based on free and open-source software (FOSS), which allows customization for any sampling design. The framework was developed by means of a GIS project (QGIS), a GIS collector (QField), and an R code, allowing further adjustments according to the area to be surveyed and research questions. The aim is to improve data collection, accessibility, and interoperability, as well as to help to fill the currently existing gap between fieldwork and data analysis, preventing typos and allowing better data processing. Therefore, it is expected to take less than an hour from ending fieldwork to obtaining up-to-date products. To test the developed open-source geospatial framework, it was applied in different sectors and dates on an important southern Brazilian touristic beach. Results obtained from the open-source geospatial framework application produce baseline information on beach litter issues, such as amounts, sources, and spatial and temporal patterns. Adoption of the framework can facilitate data collection by local and regional stakeholders, and the results obtained from it can be applied to support management strategies. For researchers, it produces spatialized data for each item in an already tidy format, which can be used for robust and complex models. A series of supplementary files support reproducibility and provide a guide to future users.