Artificial reefs installed at Guamaré, Rio Grande do Norte State: Artisanal Fisheries Support Program

Abstract

In Northeast Brazil there is a tradition to build up artifi cial reefs known as marambaias, pesqueiros or caiçaras. In the last years, several great-sized projects were carried out in order to enhance artisanal fi sheries and to preserve the coastal marine fi shing resources. This work describes the results obtained in the four years of the Marambaia Project monitoring, which was started up by PETROBRÁS with the support of the Universidade Federal do Ceará, in Guamaré (RN), in 1999. The material used consisted of concrete structures called casulos. Since their installation in the sea up to 2004, sixty-three economically important fi sh species were identifi ed and registered. Taking into account the latest results, the number of species found in the structures has shown an upward trend; the casulo structures did not undergo any structural modifi cations; among the species found in the casulos, thirteen of them formed schools varying from those with few individuals up to ones with large groups; among the species observed, seven were present in all the casulos surveyed; several species had a short-term presence in the area what may have allowed room to other more dominant species that went on to occupy the casulos since the previous monitoring program.