Fish Fauna of the Jordanian Coast, Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea

This paper presents a fish inventory of the Jordanian Gulf of Aqaba. Fish sampling was conducted by means of different fishing gears, monitoring of local fish market and visual census technique. A total of 507 fish species belonging to 109 families with an average of 4.7 species per family; 18 Chondrichthyes and 489 Ostichthyes. The largest families are as follows (number of species in parentheses): Labridae (51), Pomacentridae (29), Serranidae (25), Apogonidae and Blenniidae (24, each), Gobiidae (21), Carangidae (17) and Syngnathidae (16). Collectively these eight families comprise 40.8% of the fish fauna. The great majority are from benthic habitat (82.8%) and the remaining are pelagic fish. About 30.6% of the fish species feed on invertebrates and fish while 24.8% feed on invertebrates only. The endemic species present 12.8% of the recorded species in the Gulf of Aqaba, and this is slightly less than the percentage of endemic species in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, 13.7%. On the Jordanian part of the Gulf of Aqaba seventy six fish species are reported for the first time. Out of them Gymnothorax monochrous, Myripristis xanthacra, Corythoichthys haematopterus, Syngnathus macrophthalmus, Istiblennius flaviumbrinus, Enneapterygius destai and Grammatorycnus bilineatus species are first confirmed report for the first time in the entire Gulf. Novaculichthys macrolepidotus is extremely rare species and only observed among the sea grass meadow at Al-Mamlah Bay in less than 2 m deep and this species needs special conservation measures. Sparus auratus, Dicentrarchus labrax, and Tilapia sp. were introduced to the Gulf of Aqaba through mariculture projects in the surrounding area.