Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs; or drones) are an emerging tool to provide a safer, cheaper, and quieter alternative to traditional methods of studying marine megafauna in a natural environment. The UFES Nectology Laboratory team developed a drone-monitoring to assess the impacts on megafauna related to the Fundão dam mining tailings disaster in the Southeast Brazilian coast. We have developed a systematic pattern to optimize the available resources by covering the largest possible area. The fauna observer can monitor the environment from a privileged angle with virtual reality and subsequently analyzes each video captured in 4k, allowing to deepening behavioral ecology knowledge. Applying the drone-monitoring method, we have observed an increasing detectability by adjusting the camera angle, height, orientation, and speed of the UAV; which saved time and resources for monitoring turtles, sea birds, large fish, and especially small cetaceans efficiently and comparably.

Southwestern Atlantic/eastern South American records of the Kerguelen Petrel Lugensa brevirostris are scarce, comprised only of specimens found dead on the coast. Here we present a review of records known from this region, including a novel record based on a specimen stranded at Arraial do Cabo, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. Additionally, we draw the attention of ornithologists and observers to problems of specimen identification, even in museums, when one needs to separate Kerguelen Petrel from dark-morph Herald Petrel Pterodroma arminjoniana or other dark-plumaged gadfly petrels of the genus Pterodroma. For identification of museum specimens, we recommend the use of an osteological character state, which allows unequivocal identification of Kerguelen Petrels, namely the wide and fenestrated fossa glandulae nasalis of the frontal bone.