Marine Hardbottom Environments in the Beaches of Ceará State, Equatorial Coast of Brazil

Abstract

This paper is a literature review on marine hardbottom environments (MHE) that emerge in coastal regions in the Brazilian state of Ceará. This stretch of the Brazilian coast houses several rock formations, which are widely distributed in the intertidal zone. These formations have various origins and composition, ranging from crystalline rocks to biogenic structures, but most are composed by sandstones. These substrates support biodiverse ecosystems that produce valuable environmental goods and services, which have historical and socioeconomic relevance for the state. Despite their importance, they are currently threatened by various types of local and global stressors, and a consistent government effort to protect them is still lacking. There are many knowledge gaps regarding these formations and new studies are needed to support conservation actions involving these ecosystems.
 Keywords: reef, beachrock, sandstone, intertidal zone, benthos

Lionfish on the loose: Pterois invade shallow habitats in the tropical southwestern Atlantic

“…Some of these habitats were near or inside estuaries such as in the Igaracu and Timonha rivers, and at least one sighting event occurred adjacent to a large seagrass bed (in the cove of Cajueiro da Praia municipality). Fishing weirs are relatively common on intertidal sandbanks or hard bottoms in this low-latitude region (Carneiro et al, 2022) and comprise fixed enclosuretype traps, usually made of rods and wires, and are traditionally distributed along the beach and estuaries (Lucena et al, 2013) (Figure 3D).…”

“…The Brazilian northeast ecoregion (sensu Spalding et al, 2007) (Figure 1) is characterized by a diversity of tropical coastal and marine ecosystems, including seagrass and rhodolith beds, mangroves, intertidal sandstone reefs, and shallow-water coral reefs (Irion et al, 2012;Soares et al, 2017;Costa et al, 2020;Carneiro et al, 2021;Carneiro et al, 2022). The Brazilian semiarid coast is a scarcely known region of great ecological and socioeconomic importance.…”

“…The strong incidence of trade winds, in combination with intense coastal currents and consistently high swell and semidiurnal mesotides, leads to an intense hydrodynamic regime with frequent sediment resuspension and moderate turbidity in the coastal region (Teixeira and Machado, 2013;Dias et al, 2016). Despite these suboptimal carbonate reef growth characteristics, the region has rhodolith beds (Carneiro et al, 2021) and marginal reefs in the intertidal, shallow, and mesophotic zones (Soares et al, 2019;Carneiro et al, 2022). The mesophotic reefs on the Brazilian semiarid coast have a semicontinuous alignment (Soares et al, 2019) with the Amazon Reef (Rocha, 2003;Moura et al, 2016;Francini-Filho et al, 2018), where lionfish have been previously recorded (Luiz et al, 2021).…”