[Coral-List] Saudi Reefs
Gwilym Rowlands
rowlands at nova.edu
Fri Sep 12 17:00:27 EDT 2008
Hi David,
In May 2006, an exhaustive survey of reef habitats and associated
fisheries, feeding into a large scale habitat mapping project, was
carried out in the western Farasan Islands, Jizan province. The work,
carried out under the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, was
a collaboration of a number of agencies including the National Coral
Reef Institute (NCRI), Nova Southeastern University, to which I am
affiliated.
I presented the preliminary outputs of this project at the recent
International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS). In summary, the western
edge of the Farasan Islands is largely a sedimentary system. Algae and
sponge assemblages cover much of the available hardground and
consolidated sediment habitats. That said, significant coral resources
exist within dense micro-atoll formations as well as vast Acroporid
carpets located primarily in the north-west. The fringing reef habitat
around most of the Farasan Islands is dominated by macro-algae.
Upcoming work in the early next year will incorporate assessment of
more coastal reef areas in the region. The work in Jizan feeds into a
larger basin-scale project providing baseline monitoring,
characterisation and mapping of reef areas, along the Saudi coastline
from Tabuk to Jizan province. Publications detailing this body of work
are expected mid-way through 2009.
Best regards
Gwilym
--
Gwilym Rowlands
National Coral Reef Institute (NCRI)
Oceanographic Center
Nova Southeastern University
8000 N. Ocean Drive, Dania
FL 33004
USA
Email: rowlands at nova.edu
Phone: ++01-954-262-3615
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