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In conjunction with the Baleia Jubarte Project, Petrobras is carrying out the largest monitoring project for whales and dolphins ever carried out in the country in terms of scope.
Petrobras, November 25, 2019 – Two days after the first attempt, the pilot received authorization from the tower to start the engines of the plane that would take off a few minutes later, from the runway at Hercílio Luz International Airport, in Florianópolis. Unlike ordinary flights, with dozens of passengers rushing to land at their destination, this would be a whale watching flight. The four people accommodated in the aircraft's seats also escaped common sense and left behind the stereotype of the passenger who travels thinking about the problems of the origin or destination of the trip. The biggest concern of the observers on the flight would be to look carefully through the windows and try to register the presence of whales and dolphins along the coast.
Divided into two stages, the flights are part of the largest cetacean monitoring work ever carried out in the country in terms of area. The trip covered a total area of 272 km2, equivalent to the sum of the territories of the states of Santa Catarina and Paraná.
A condition for pre-salt exploration and production
The first stage is part of the Santos Basin Cetacean Monitoring Project (PMC-BS), a necessary condition for the release of Petrobras activities for exploration and production in the Santos Basin pre-salt layer. Not everyone knows, but carrying out an oil extraction project is not just about positioning a probe and producing the oil and gas accumulated in a reservoir rock below the ground. Any exploration and production project needs to meet a series of prerequisites defined by environmental agencies, which include complementary actions aimed at mitigating impacts.
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The PMC–BS, carried out by the Socioambiental consultancy, aimed to learn about the distribution and ecology of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) in order to assess possible impacts of human activities on the different species of these animals in the Santos Basin. The first cycle of the project, running since 2015, will run until 2021 and will collect data to establish guidelines for monitoring cetaceans in the long term (during the entire pre-salt oil and gas exploration).
Biologist Carolina Bezamat, from Socioambiental, participated in the flights and told a little about the experience.
As expected for a winter campaign, we saw several whales, mainly humpback whales that come to Brazil at this time of year to reproduce. We also saw a very large group of about 300 dolphins. When we passed them, we didn't know there were so many, but we suspect it was a large group as observers on both sides saw it. We got happy.
The researchers also spotted a porpoise, the most endangered species of dolphin along the Brazilian coast.
For Fernando Gonçalves de Almeida, environmental monitoring coordinator at Petrobras, the adoption of a monitoring approach with multiple data collection methods projects the PMC-BS as one of the largest and most important cetacean monitoring projects ever carried out in Brazil.
The legacy that the development of the project will leave for the technical and scientific knowledge of this group goes far beyond meeting legal requirements. It is today the most complete and longest-running cetacean monitoring project developed in Brazil.
The second stage of the monitoring flights, which went from Cabo Frio - RJ to the border between the states of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará, was not a legal condition. The research carried out by Projeto Baleia Jubarte, in addition to estimating the size of the population, helps to determine the distribution of whales along our coast and identifies areas of greater concentration. The work also makes it possible to understand the potential overlaps with human activities in these areas and to work preventively to reconcile uses and mitigate impacts.
About the Humpback Whale Project
Operating for 30 years in the research and conservation of humpback whales and the marine environment in Brazil, the project is sponsored by Petrobras through the Petrobras Socioenvironmental Program and is part of the Biomar Network. The network's projects (Albatroz, Coral Vivo, Dolphin Spinner, Jubarte and Tamar) act in an integrated manner in the conservation of marine biodiversity in Brazil.
Source: Petrobras
