Way beyond its primary goal: a decade of scientific contributions from the world’s largest systematic beach survey program

Abstract

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.