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Occurrence of tar balls on the beaches of Fernando de Noronha Island, South Equatorial Atlantic

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Abstract

This work reports on the widespread occurrence of tar balls on a pebble beach of Sueste Bay on Fernando de Noronha Island, a Brazilian national marine park and a preserve in the South Equatorial Atlantic. Environmental regulations preclude regular visitors to the Sueste Bay beach, and the bay is a pristine area without any possible or potential sources of petroleum in the coastal zone. In this work, these tar balls were observed for the first time as they occurred as envelopes around beach pebbles. They are black in color, very hard, have a shell and coral fragment armor, and range in average size from 2 to 6 cm. The shape of the majority of the tar balls is spherical, but some can also be flattened ellipsoids. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon analyses of the collected samples revealed the characteristics of a strongly weathered material, where only the most persistent compounds were detected: chrysene, benzo(b,k)fluoranthene, dibenzo(a,h)antracene and benzo(a)pyrene.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and PETROBRAS for financial support of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Geologia, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Av. General Milton Tavares de Souza, 24210-346, Niterói, RJ, Brazil

    José Antônio Baptista Neto, Susanna Eleonora Sichel & Estefan Monteiro da Fonseca

  2. Departamento de Geologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil

    Thomas Ferreira da Costa Campos

  3. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Avenida Bento Gonçalves, 9500, 91501-970, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Carala Danielle Perreira de Andrade

  4. Departamento de Mineralogia e Petrologia Ígnea, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Akihisa Motoki

Authors
  1. José Antônio Baptista Neto
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  2. Thomas Ferreira da Costa Campos
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  3. Carala Danielle Perreira de Andrade
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  4. Susanna Eleonora Sichel
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  5. Estefan Monteiro da Fonseca
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  6. Akihisa Motoki
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Correspondence to José Antônio Baptista Neto.

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Baptista Neto, J.A., da Costa Campos, T.F., de Andrade, C.D.P. et al. Occurrence of tar balls on the beaches of Fernando de Noronha Island, South Equatorial Atlantic. Environ Geochem Health 36, 1199–1203 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-014-9623-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-014-9623-6

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