ABSTRACT Ocean Literacy (OL) was proposed by UNESCO as a goal for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade) aiming to (1) increase understanding of the importance of the ocean, (2) significantly influence communication on related subjects, and (3) facilitate informed and responsible decision-making about the ocean and its resources. Formal education is essential to expand the reach of OL, providing people with tools to engage in coastal and marine issues consciously and knowingly. To this end, content analysis of school curricula can help planning strategies, especially to empower citizens to implement public policies. This study assessed the extent to which OL-related terms and words are present in Brazilian curricular documents at federal (National Curriculum Parameters-PCNs and Common National Curriculum Base-BNCC) and regional (Federative Units curricular guidelines-RCs) levels. Qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative analyses (descriptive and non-parametric statistics, and multivariate analysis) were performed. The number of occurrences of OL-related words and terms were registered and counted. Nineteen words were found, totaling 797 citations (a frequency of 0.0001 in the total number of words referring to content). The number of citations were higher in BNCC-based RCs than in PCN-based RCs (Kruskal-Wallis test, p = 0.0009). Principal component analysis separated the documents into two groups, one related to BNCC-based RCs of Northeast, North and Midwest regions, with a higher number of OL related terms, and the other group with the PCN based RCs of these same regions plus those documents of Southeast and South regions (principal component 1 explaining 97.90% of the total variation and having 0.93 correlation with the total frequency of citations). General results indicated that Brazilian production on fields and themes related to OL is still concentrated in national journals, books, and booklets, thus with a limited impact. In same way although school curricula in Brazil have a larger number of topics on marine environments than do other countries, they showed heterogeneity among Federative Units, but generally with the topics still representing a very small fraction of Brazilian curricula. Thus, it is necessary to expand the contents related to the ocean and marine environments in curricula to provide students with basic knowledge about the importance and functions of these environments, as well as their conservation. Therefore, results here emphasize the need to implement OL to highlight the importance of knowledge of the oceans and enable citizens to discuss marine conservation policies and promote ocean sustainability. This study provided some strategies to increase OL in formal education and, hence, reach various stakeholders, which is fundamental to implement the United Nations Ocean Decade in Brazil and the Global South.

Resumo Sambaquis são sítios arqueológicos, datando entre 8,000 e 1,000 anos antes do presente, encontrados na costa brasileira. Neste trabalho, dados ictiológicos referentes a 68 sambaquis da costa Sudeste do Brasil foram compilados e construído um inventário de referência no qual constam 142 espécies, a maioria das quais com registro em não mais que cinco sítios. Por outro lado, as espécies Micropogonias furnieri e Pogonias cromis apresentaram alta frequência de ocorrência nos sambaquis. Os dados biogeográficos, ecológicos e econômicos mostraram que a maioria das espécies registradas nos sambaquis são de ampla distribuição no Atlântico Ocidental (59.72%), habitam ambientes estuarinos (53.99%), tem um hábito demersal (35.92%) e comportamento oceânico migratório (28.87%). A maioria dos registros diz respeito a peixes carnívoros (72.54%) e com algum valor comercial (96.48%). A comparação da lista de ictiofauna registrada para os sambaquis com uma lista construída com base em inventários atuais de peixes para mesma região não mostrou diferenças significativas (teste de qui-quadrado, p> 0.99). Dessa forma, os resultados apresentados indicam que os vestígios de ictiofauna encontrados em sambaquis constituem uma amostra relevante da biodiversidade do Holoceno podendo ser muito úteis na construção de inventários de referências mais completos da fauna ictiológica da costa brasileira.

Abstract Middens are archaeological sites dating between 8,000 and 1,000 years before present and are commonly found on the Brazilian coast. Data were collected from 68 middens allowing an inventory of 142 fish species, most of them recorded in no more than five sites. Conversely, Micropogonias furnieri and Pogonias cromis had the highest frequencies of occurrence. The biogeographic, ecological and economic data showed that most of the identified fish are widely distributed in the Western Atlantic (59.72%) and inhabit estuarine environments (53.99%), while most species have a demersal habit (35.92%) and exhibit oceanic migratory behaviour (28.87%). Lastly, the surveyed fish are predominantly carnivorous (72.54%) with some commercial value (96.48%). Chi-squared tests comparing midden inventory and current ichthyofauna checklists failed to show significant differences between them (p > 0.99). Thus, the results indicate that zoo-archaeological fish remains are key evidence of Holocene biodiversity and may help the establishment of more complete baselines.