Português

Abstract

Marine animals are recognized as those organisms that derive most or all of their nutrition from the sea, oceans or estuarine environments, among which are marine tetrapods. Anthropic actions end up impacting on marine environments, where they end up suffering from environmental stress and one of the responses of marine animals to this ends up being beaching, so this work aims to collect information on strandings of marine animals in Southern of Santa Catarina in a time span of 13 years. The study was conducted on the southern coast of Santa Catarina, comprising approximately 120 km of open sea beaches and the mouth of the Mampituba river, in the municipality of Passo de Torres. The collected data were stored in Excel spreadsheet and are part of the collection of the Professor Morgana Cirimbelli Gaidzinski Museum of Zoology. With this study, 222 strandings (4 living and 218 dead) belonging to five species, five genera and two families were recorded. Four dead species were identified only at order level as a function of the advanced stage of decomposition. All five recorded turtle species are under some degree of threat at all three levels of analysis (global, national and state), with the vulnerable (VU), critically endangered (CR) and endangered (EN) being the categories prevailing. Knowing which species are stranded and their abundances underlies decision making in conservation projects. Thus, it will be possible to reach a higher level in the conservation of the order of marine Testudines that pass by the coast of the extreme south of Santa Catarina.