31/03/2016
As part of the continuous monitoring of aquatic life in the Doce River, the second sonar expedition took place between March 16-21 to verify the presence of fish and other species of sea life along the river course.
The covered route comprises the mouth of the Doce River, in Regência, ES and the Risoleta Neves hydropower plant reservoir in the municipality of Rio Doce, MG, summing up to 670km of monitored area.
With the sonar attached to a boat with an outboard motor, each section of the river was inspected in order to cover the assessed area with best possible representativeness according to the study methodology. The study was similar to the one conducted in December and the results will give rise to a new report
Fábio Vieira, from ACQUA Consultancy, has been studying the Doce River aquatic life for over 20 years and explained that this method was chosen because of the speed of response as well because it does not imply the capture and sacrifice of the fish. According to Vieira, taking into account only the primary objective of the diagnosis – which is to detect the presence of fish – the conventional methods (fishnets, casting nets and others) could result in false negative results, i.e., when there are fish, but these are not captured and thus do not represent reality.
