Cat no Brasil: A Maior Praia do Mundo

Recently, we had another Fulbrighter visit the oceanography department at FURG. She’s doing a Faculty Fulbright in Jericoacoara, Ceará (a state at the northeastern tip of Brazil). Jean's visit was awesome. She helped me develop some of my project for my masters on sediment transport on Ilha Trinidade and explained how she uses fluid dynamics to calculate rates of wind-driven sediment transport. Basically, Jean is a boss and I can't adequately describe how cool she is in this post.

Jean, my advisor, and I went on a field trip along the beach towards Uruguay. Here in Rio Grande, I live on the maior praia do mundo (the largest beach in the world)!! But I'd say when discussing beaches one should put more importance on quality rather than quantity. Because our beach here is big, it's also a whole-lotta ugly. There's a running joke about our terrible beaches in Rio Grande do Sul.

The trip was a unique opportunity. There are no houses, towns, or roads that run parallel to the beach. It's deserted for miles. To see the shoreline, you have to drive on the sand along the ocean until you reach Uruguay. It's also the most dissipative beach I've ever seen. I'll explain why that's interesting: A dissipative beach means that the energy of the beach is spread out – in other words the waves break beginning very far from the shore and continue breaking until they reach land. In this way the energy is dispersed. Whereas the opposite would be a reflective beach, where all the water comes crashing up to steep rocks or sand very suddenly. On a dissipative beach you could walk into the water very far and still just be shin-deep because the beach becomes deeper very gradually. It was strange to see the waves crashing constantly as far as half a mile out and continue to where we were standing. One of the most shocking things about the trip, however, was the quantity of dead animals that we saw: dead seals, dead penguins, dead fish, dead sea turtles. It was horrible. They were everywhere rotting along the beach. I’ve never seen anything like it. I have no idea if it’s normal but it made me sick to look at. It was a little eerie- kind of an overcast, deserted graveyard of sea animals. Along the beach are huge nonfunctioning fields of wind turbines. I can’t help but think of the turbines and the dead animals next to them as a juxtaposition of human development and its consequences.

I’ve included some photos.