New record of the southern right whale dolphin, Lissodelphis peronii (Lacépède, 1804), in the coastal waters of Brazil

Abstract

The southern right whale dolphin, Lissodelphis peronii (Lacépède, 1804), is a species of cetacean that is distributed in cold and deep waters throughout the Southern Hemisphere, with records in coastal waters of the western Atlantic Ocean being extremely rare. On January 7, 2019, a specimen still alive, was recorded entangled in a fishing gillnet on the beach at Cardoso Beach (28°44′S, 48°58′W), in the state of Santa Catarina, on the southern coast of Brazil. The recording was made by a lifeguard using a GoPro camera and was made available through citizen science. The animal was untangled and released while still alive and was not found stranded again after the date of the event. Based on existing literature, this is the second record of the species in Brazilian waters. Analyzing meteorological and oceanographic features from the days preceding the record, it was not possible to make any association between the entanglement and the variables analyzed, and no explanatory driver could therefore be established for this unusual event.