A rapid assessment of Scleractinian and nonSclera

Authors: Abdulmohsin A AlSofyani N Marimuthu J Jerald Wilson

Publish Date: 2014/01/26

Volume: 13, Issue: 2, Pages: 243-248

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Abstract

In this study we assessed the current status of coral reefs along the Saudi Arabian coast of the Red Sea Among the three growth forms of Acroporid corals the branching forms were found to dominate in the Farassan Islands 4455±1110 cover followed by tabular forms in the Doga Islands ranging between 18±647 and 1830±947 cover Digitate forms were rarely found along the coast except at Maqna Among the five growth forms of nonAcroporid corals we observed maximum cover of branching forms in the Yanbu offshore area 5889±1511 cover followed by the Jeddah coast 2476±1404 cover The Millepora spp a nonScleractinian coral was abundant at all the nearshore sites such as Jeddah 1070±821 and AlWajh 981±669 The live coral cover including both Scleractinian and nonScleractinian corals of Saudi Red Sea coast was seen to be higher in the north and gradually decrease towards the south Principal Component analysis showed that the contribution of Acroporid corals was greater in the southern region than in the northern and middle regions but viceversa in the case of nonAcroporid corals BrayCurtis cluster analysis categorized all the study sites into two major clusters with 60 similarity Among them one clusterforming sites from Maqna to Masturah Northern region and the second one comprised the middle and southern regions Jeddah to Farassan Islands and one outlier Rabigh

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