Monitore Tupinambás

Created March 24, 2023, 6:37 p.m.

Updated Feb. 23, 2024, 9:37 a.m.

This translation was done before the last project update. Plase help the community by improving it here

Brazil's marine and coastal environments are the least protected by conservation units (a type of marine protected area - MPA - in Brazil). Currently, only 1.57% of the Brazilian marine area is protected by Protected Areas (PAs) (55,199 km² divided into 166 PAs) against 18.0% of continental areas (1,530,579 km² divided by 2,053 PAs). This highlights the need for greater attention to the coastal and marine areas of the country.

It also highlights the need for continued monitoring of these PAs for their effective management, which sometimes is not performed properly due to lack of human and financial resources.

Within this context, the "Monitore Tupinambás" project aims to test a simple, quick and low-cost tool for the long-term monitoring of the organisms of MPAs, integrating employees, researchers and citizen scientists, in order to assist in the management of these areas. If we know which are the organisms and how they vary through time, we can better plan their conservation in the MPAs.

Currently, this pilot project is in testing period, and is divided into two stages:

Stage 1: The photographic record of the organisms of rocky shores (data gathering)
Stage 2: Photo analysis for biotopes identification (data processing).
Both stages involve citizen scientists.

Stage 1 was held on the Ilha das Palmas (Ubatuba - São Paulo state, southeastern Brazil), which is one of the islands belonging to the Tupinambás Ecological Station (ESEC Tupinambás), with the help of its employees who are SCUBA divers.

The photos were recorded on a stretch of the island's rocky shores, at depths ranging from 6 to 12 m, both in summer and in early autumn (January and April, 2017).

Now, for the stage 2, your help is essential! We need to identify the biotopes present in these photos.

Be part of the Monitore Tupinambás project and contribute to the development of this tool that can help in the monitoring and conservation of marine environments!

How to participate

Visit https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/larissakawabe/monitore-tupinambas/ and classify the biotopes present in the photographs of the rocky shores of ESEC Tupinambás in the photos, so that we can generate a database for the long-term monitoring of this area.