Fish biodiversity in coastal coral reefs of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract EN

Reef fish diversity were investigated at two sites of Jeddain, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,.

Thirty-six visual strip-transects yielded 116 species of 37 families.

Studied locations shared at least 70.7% (82 species) of all species.

Only nine species were only present in Site I which consists of 7.7% of the total species throughout the study.

Twenty Five species were only present in Site 2 which consists of 21.6% of the total species throughout the study.

The average number species per family in this study is 3.14.

Based on the richness there is almost a trend throughout the period of this study that the richness were higher at 5 meter depth with an exception occurred in the month of October, when the richness in 10 meter depth were higher (77 species) than that of the 5 meter depth in Site 2.

The Shannon-Weiner diversity index showed higher values for both depths in Site 2 during the months of April and October; ranging from 2.729-3.116.

The index was almost the same for the two sites and the two depths during the month of July ranging from 2.654 to 2.683