South View 1977

PRAIA BRAVA

  Located at the north of Guaratuba Bay, Praia Brava, 3,000 meters long, had serious erosion problems over its entire length. It still has problems at the north section.

In 1979 and 1982 the conditions of Praia Brava were the following:

 
Just like Praia Mansa, the erosion problem at Praia Brava began with the increase in the number of buildings, street paving, the discharge of pluvial water on the beach and removal of the native vegetation that helped to protect the beach.

We can observe the precarious situation of the center of the beach, near the DNOS channel, which existed in 1977 and which can be observed in the picture at the top of this page.
In 1979, the sea destroyed part of the sidewalk. The Government of the State of Parana then used stones to protect the avenue.
The above pictures were taken in 1981 and 1983 respectively, after much destruction and repair attempts with stone. We can observe in picture at the right the remaining parts of two small groins we attempted to build in 1983 and which contributed to the deposit of sand.

In 1985, a great storm removed large amounts of sand from Praia Brava, placing in danger the kiosk at the southern end of the beach.

With the help of Mr. Mario Forcadell, we developed a project to protect and and to try to restore the beach. This job was initiated at the end of 1985, with funds from the government of the State of Parana, and was personally supervised by us step by step. Starting at Morro de Caioba, a small mountain at the end of the beach, 750 meters of adherent revetment in gabions were built. Several small groins in gabion were also placed, to speed up the deposit of sand.

In 1986, 750 additional meters of adherent revetment were built, from the end of the first gabions to the DNOS channel, at the middle of the beach. Besides this, several small groins were built as well as a small training wall at the mouth of the channel, to reduce sand lost due to the modification of the mouth of the channel.

The pictures below were taken respectively in 1985 and 1986.
We also built a gabion seawall at the northern end of Praia Brava, next to "Ponta de Matinhos" (Matinhos Point) and in the northern part of the channel mouth.

Until the end of 1987, we attended the southern section with new groins and increases in the length of the old ones.
The results were as we had expected.

Indispensable interventions that were needed were not executed, and negative ones were, such as the ones committed by the Municipal Government of Matinhos - for example, rain water again began to be discharged on the beach!

In spite of this, the south beach section still seems stable, as is shown in the following pictures taken respectively in 1982 and October, 1996:
In 1997, March:

In 1999, August

In 2004, February

 

 

 

 

 

 

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