Evolution of Brazilian legislation regarding the marine fauna: Advances and shortcomings between 1960 and 2020

Environmental legislation has been created to conciliate nature conservation with socioeconomic development, but its effectiveness in marine ecosystems has been scantly assessed. Megadiverse countries with high potential for industrial fishing, tourism, ocean sprawl, oil and gas exploitation are expected to have a comprehensive and juridically secure legislation to ensure long-term sustainable development. Using Brazil as a study model of megadiverse country, we summarize the legal federal instruments involved in the protection of marine fauna between 1960 and 2020. Our goal was to estimate the level of juridical security and biological coverage of the country’s legislation. We searched for marine species in laws, resolutions, decrees, normative instructions, and ordinances in official databases and the specialized literature. Our surveys revealed a total of 443 legal instruments, more than half arose after 2000. About 88% were ordinances, normative instructions and decrees, which can be easily revoked without social participation and political debate. Laws and resolutions, the most secure instruments after the Federal Constitution, accounted for only 12% of the instruments. Only 138 species were explicitly listed in 352 instruments, which barely represents 7% of the marine animal diversity recognized by the Brazilian government. Invertebrates such as sponges, corals and echinoderms were proportionally less protected than vertebrates. Fishes were the most unprotected group among the vertebrates. Some instruments encompassed entire ecosystems rather than individual species, which is more effective for long-term conservation. We conclude that the legislation regarding marine fauna has grown considerably since the 1960 s, but remain juridically weak and biologically limited.