Sururu is a shellfish and culinary delicacy from Maceió, a tourist paradise in Northeastern Brazil. But in the last few years it started to disappear, losing ground to a strange new kind of mussel local fisherman began calling ‘white sururu’.
This exotic species first appeared in 2023 at the same time a rock-salt mine collapsed beneath the Mundaú Lagoon in Maceió. Now, fisherman, shellfish gatherers and scientists argue whether the mining disaster is behind the white sururu plague.