Abstract

Photo-identification (photo-iD) is a widely utilized approach on a variety of marine species including marine mammals, sea turtles and cartilaginous fish, providing a single non-invasive mark-recapture technique, which is critical for threatened species such as the goliath grouper, Epinephelus itajara. Photographic records came from the Participative Survey Program of Projeto Meros do Brasil and from photo/video companies. Recognition of individual animals, used natural marks, mainly spots over the head of the GG. The free computer-aided photo-identification I3S was used, although some manual inspection of the photo database was needed. The offshore archipelago of Fernando de Noronha (National Marine Park), located 186nm off northeastern Brazil (03°50? S, 32°25? W), provided the most important data that allowed long time analyses, between April 2004 and May 2013, where six different GG were registered in 84 different days. Results showed that goliath groupers were observed at 11 different dive sites. From April 2004 to November 2006, four different goliath groupers were in the area, disappearing in the following years, where the fifth specimen was observed from December 2007 to January 2012, being then replaced by the sixth specimen in October 2012, registered for the last time in May 2013. Caverna da Sapata and Ilha do Meio where the most visited places by the fifth specimen along 50 months, which also migrated distances of 11km within a maximum of four days, between these sites. The Project intends to start a telemetry tagging study to refine the information on a well-known spawning area in south Brazil.

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