Rhodoliths

The PELD ES area is located within the limits of the Costa das Algas Marine Protected Area (MPA) on the Eastern Marine Ecoregion of Brazil. This is a tropical region characterized by rainy summers, with predominantly NE and E winds, and the continental shelf on Eastern Brazil is influenced by the Tropical Water (TW) of the Brazil Current, with temperatures above 22 °C and salinities above 36 (Mazzuco et al., 2019), and eventual seasonal summer upwelling of the South Atlantic Central Water (SACW) into the shelf, with temperatures between 6 °C and below 20 °C and salinities between 34.6 and 36. The continental shelf on the Espírito Santo basin includes a mixed system of terrestrial and carbonate sediments with rhodolith beds extending down to the shelf break at depths over 80 m. These rhodolith beds have been studied with respect to their benthic biodiversity, and our results showed that the complexity of beds are key to species diversity and organic matter availability to the benthos. More info on the paper by Stelzer et al. 2021 (Peer J - https://peerj.com/articles/8289/ )