Museu da Tartaruga Marinha do Projeto Tamar na Praia do Forte (Mata de São João-BA): Sensibilização para a conservação marinha.

Abstract

The Sea Turtle Museum of the Tamar Project in Praia do Forte, State of Bahia, Brazil, is one of the five most visited museums in the Northeast region of the country, and the major channel of communication of the project with society. It makes it possible to receive the community, schools, journalists and tourists in general, with an attendance higher than 500.000 visitors per year. This museum also provides jobs and income for the community, impels the local culture, and contributes with essential resources to maintain the conservation program. All give species of sea turtles present in Brazil are threatened by extinction due to human actions, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and the National List of Brazilian Fauna Species Threatened by Extinction, from the Ministry of Environment. After 35 years of conservation actions by Project Tamar, direct consumption is not the major problem anymore. Nevertheless, new impacts and threats to sea turtles appeared. The museum aims at broadening public understanding of the threats to sea turtles and the challenges for their conservation, giving rise to new allies in the conservation efforts. The present study intends to develop proper methods for analyzing the strategies for environmental awareness adopted by the museum, measuring the achieved outcomes, by means of interviews and two questionnaires, one structured, the other semi-structure, applied to the visitors. The data gathered shows that the museum has been successful in changing the public perception regarding sea turtle conservation and the works carried out for their protection when the visitors interacted with the museum team during the visit. This indicates the importance of interacting with the museum guides for successful communication and interpretation of the museum objects by the visitors, pointing to the need of intensifying guided visits, or, alternatively, change the museum objects and their exhibition in order to increase the potential impact of unguided visits. The themes addressed in the museum raise the interest of the visitors, according to our results. The choices and approaches were found adequate for most of them. The methods adopted for the evaluation of the museum in this study were shown to be efficient and we suggest its incorporation into the museum evaluation process.