The Amazon River Basin, known for its rich biodiversity, has witnessed a tragic event. Over the past week, 120 river dolphin carcasses have been discovered floating in its tributaries. Experts suspect that the severe drought and extreme heat are the culprits behind this mass mortality.

Dolphin Discovery

The carcasses of these dolphins were discovered floating in a tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil. The Mamiraua Institute, a renowned research group, reported that two additional dolphins were found dead near Tefe Lake.

In a recent study, scientists in Brazil are sounding the alarm for the Williams' side-necked turtle (Phrynops williamsi), a rare species found only in Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest and neighboring Pampa grasslands. The growing hydroelectric power industry in the country poses a grave threat to these turtles, already classified as "Vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Brazil's environmental protection agency, Ibama, estimated that approximately 11,000 blue sharks and shortfin mako sharks, which Brazil listed as endangered last month, were killed.

The fins, which were destined for Asia, where shark fin soup is considered a delicacy, were found in two locations.

First spotted in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida in the 1980s, they later spread across the Caribbean, reshuffling coral reefs and other ecosystems by feasting on fish unfamiliar with the voracious predator.

The existence of the reef have come as big surprise because many of the world’s great rivers produce major gaps in reef systems where no corals grow. There was little previous evidence because corals mostly thrive in clear, sunlit, salt water, and the equatorial waters near the mouth of the Amazon are some of the muddiest in the world, with vast quantities of sediment washed thousands of miles down the river and swept hundreds of miles out to sea.

In an article just published in the open-access science journal PloS One, the first appearance of lionfish off the Brazilian coast has been reported.

The invasion of the northwestern Atlantic by the Indo-Pacific lionfish has developed extraordinarily fast, and is expected to cause one of the most negative ecological impacts among all marine invasions. Despite the anticipation that lionfish would eventually extend their range throughout most of the eastern coast of South America, it had not been recorded in Brazil until now.