  Consistent with satellite-tracked trajectories of drogued drifters, but at
odds with Eulerian assessment of satellite-altimetry measurements of
sea-surface height, we show that North Brazil Currents Rings (NBCRs) are
incapable of bypassing the Lesser Antilles as structures that coherently
transport material. The nature of the inability of the de-facto oceanographic
Eulerian, streamline-based eddy detection technique to produce a correct
assessment is rooted in its lack of objectivity. We arrive at this conclusion
by applying \emph{geodesic eddy detection} on the altimetric dataset over
nearly its entire extent. While we detect northwestward translating NBCRs that
can be classified as coherent Lagrangian eddies, they typically experience
strong filamentation and complete loss of coherence prior to reaching the
Lesser Antilles. Moreover, the filamented material hardly penetrates into the
Caribbean Sea, let alone the Gulf of Mexico, and not without substantively
mixing with the ambient fluid east of the archipelago.
