PRESENTATION

EMBARCADOS AND THE TODOS OS SANTOS BAY

This special issue of the Ouricuri Journal is the outcome of the project titled “Low-Cost Embedded Systems in the Monitoring of Marine Ecosystems”, called Embarcados, which was developed interdisciplinarily over the last two years, among different campuses of the State University of Bahia, in cooperation with basic education, through the Presciliano Silva State High School in Salvador, Brazilino Viegas State High School, and the Military Police High School Professor Carlos Rosa, both in the municipality of Alagoinhas, in addition to the Federal University of Recôncavo of Bahia, and with the support of sea workers from the Todos Os Santos Bay (BTS) in Bahia (northeastern Brazil).

We bring forth a socio-environmental diagnosis from the prisms and voices of the actors who composed the project, seeking to highlight the urgent dialogues about the climate emergency that enveloped the marine environment and affects all living beings on the Planet, yet disgracefully puts fishing communities at risk.

This special issue is dedicated to scientific dissemination and support for the transdisciplinary training of individuals interested in the dynamics of the sea, focusing on the BTS itself, and for this reason, this special issue of the Ouricuri Journal: Embarcados and the Todos Os Santos Bay, begins with communications from people “born and raised” in fishing communities, who here share their fishermen's stories, such as in the works The Pain and Taste of Being Who You Are: Fisherman's Stories’, and ‘Artisanal Fisheries in the Context of Hunger and the Millennium Development Goals’. Using the discourse analysis method, the work ‘Representations of artisanal fishing in the Todos Os Santos Bay: what is said and what is not said in a communicational panorama’ describe exogenous voices that speak about the BTS. These articles comprise the first Chapter: Balance of Knowledge.

Considering the stressors to the BTS, the second Chapter: Stress Agents to the Todos Os Santos Bay, presents the relationships and impacts of these on the lives of women who were born, live, or survive from the mangroves mud with the ‘Open Letter: The Voice of Shellfish Gatherers’, followed by updates on the environmental health in an article which reports on a silent and horrific form of slavery in the work ‘Molecular Colonialism and Artisanal Fishing: Pesticides and the “New” Invisible Form of Domination’.

The third Chapter, The Mother Bay, provides an understanding of the possibilities for cross-sectional relationships, thought from formal education spaces with the BTS and how this process, covered in the work ‘From the Todos Os Santos Bay Mother to the State Presciliano Silva High School,’ can provide educational experiences, as demonstrated in ‘Marine Educational Experiences in the Backlands of Bahia State’. Hence, these findings indicate to what extent it is possible to insert the BTS theme, as a locus of our history and strengthening of the collective memory about the relational networks between entities, people and the environment.

Concluding this special issue, Embarcados offers examples of how embedded systems can be used to conserve marine ecosystems in the article ‘Practical Applications of Embedded Systems for Marine Ecosystem Conservation’ and the final article, ‘Culture and Cognitive Analysis, Intersections and Counterpoints in Fragments: Reflections on Shellfishing’, reveals a perspective that considers shellfish as a multireferential place for learning and research.

To all those who have come from the sea and will be returning to the sea, a good plunge into the waves of Embarcados!

Iramaia De Santana, PhD, UNEB

Patrícia Carla Smith Galvão, PhD, UNEB

Eliane Maria De Souza Nogueira, PhD, UNEB