Sea surf unearths three whales on the coast of SP – 10/12/2023 – Daily life

The persistent surf of recent days on the south coast of São Paulo destroyed kiosks and felled trees on Cardoso Island, in Cananeia, and unearthed dead whales, already in a state of decomposition, on Ilha Comprida.

The lifeless whales found in August were unearthed by the surf between the end of last month and the beginning of this month. A third carcass was also recorded earlier this month and reburied.

“There were two kiosks that collapsed at high tide, as well as trees on the restinga in the transition to the forest that fell”, says Sérgio Carlos Neves, a resident since he was born, 48 years ago, in the Pereirinha/Itacuruçá community on Ilha do Cardoso.

Neves is also a monitor at IPeC (Cananeia Research Institute) and the uncle of the owners of the affected kiosks. There were at least two affected on Itacuruçá beach.

“My parents said that, in the past, there was a hangover like this every seven years. They even called it a ‘lazy hangover'”, he remembers. “Today we have three to five annually. This last one lasted a week between the end of September and the beginning of October.”

“It was all done in 15 minutes,” says Tiago das Neves, owner of one of the kiosks. “We didn’t even have time to disassemble it to use the wood later. What we managed to do was remove the refrigerator.”

It is the fourth kiosk that Neves says he lost to the violence of the waters — this time, in the storm surge that began under fog and lasted from the early hours of September 27th. Two others were also destroyed in 2023 and the first a few years ago.

The solution was to set up a restaurant in the backyard. The problem is that there is already a fear that the water will also reach the residence in the future.

“I’ve now made a containment barrier with branches and sandbags. I can’t use bricks because of our environmental conservation law. However, each undertow is ‘eating’ about 12 meters of sand. The tide, in fact, continues to arrive in the ravine” , it says.

The house where he lives with his wife and three children was about 200 meters from the water’s edge, but the sea has already advanced. “Now, it’s only 30 meters away. Behind it is mangroves and a river. I have nowhere to go and, in about three years, my house will be gone too.”

Tiago’s cousin, Vitor Fernandes Neves, continues without his business. “The kiosk was my only source of income”, laments him, who is married and father of two children. The entire structure of the Porto Açaí Kiosk collapsed. “This is our lives.”

He, who has lived in the area since birth, 29 years ago, knows the instabilities of the weather and says he believes that a new strong hangover will come in October — depending on the gravitational attraction exerted by the Moon on the tide. Vitor, however, is not waiting idly: he will start building a kiosk further away from the water.

“I’m getting some support to raise between R$10,000 and R$15,000 and start over”, he comments. “The intention is to serve as early as November to capture the entire summer season of tourists.”

Cananeia City Hall informs that it has not been called for recent interventions on Cardoso Island, but that it monitors the situation and shares Civil Defense alerts with the population.

Humpbacks and more rain

In Ilha Comprida, the rough sea unearthed three humpback whales that had appeared dead in mid-August (on the beaches of São Januário and Ubatuba) and on October 3 (on the beach of Pedrinhas).

All of them had been buried by the city hall to complete the decomposition stage — a procedure carried out again last week. Due to their weight of up to 40 tons and their length of up to 16 meters, animals of this type are not removed.

According to IPeC, there were four strandings in 2022 and five in 2023, all in Ilha Comprida.

The reasons for the deaths could not be detected by the institute due to the advanced state of decomposition, which hampers the collection and analysis of organic material. Natural causes and ingestion of garbage are often among the most common factors.

Humpbacks have migratory behavior: during the summer they feed in the polar areas and, in the winter, they reach the Brazilian coast to reproduce. According to the Humpback Whale project, which carries out an aerial census in this regard, the Brazilian population of the species is around 25 thousand animals.

The forecast from the meteorological services company Climatempo for Cananeia and Ilha Comprida is rain throughout this week, including storms on this Thursday’s holiday (12), which could contribute to a new rise in the sea.