The importance of shallow waters as a reservoir of biodiversity has been evidenced everywhere in the world both at temperate and tropical latitudes (Gray 1997; Duarte 2000; Raffaelli 2000; Pusceddu et al. 2003). Shallow waters function as a buffer system of interchange between open sea and land, and aquatic macrophytes represent key species regulating fluxes of energy and matter (Wetzel 1975). ...

The onset of a major seagrass initiative in West Africa enabled important discoveries several countries, one the least documented regions world. Four species occur western Africa, Cymodocea nodosa, Halodule wrightii, Ruppia maritima and Zostera noltei. An area about 62,108 ha seagrasses was studied region comprising seven countries: Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leo...

BACKGROUND: During the last several decades, seagrasses and related submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) have been lost from shallow waters of Chesapeake Bay (Orth and Moore 1983) and other coastal ecosystems worldwide (Short and Wyllie-Echeverria 1996). Losses of SAV beds are of particular concern because these plants tend to create rich habitat and food for animals, supporting growth of diverse...

Tropical coastal wetland ecosystems are widely distributed in arid regions. The Grande coastal lagoon in Peru’s central plain is shallow, eutrophic and alkaline, exposed to the annual hydrological regime with flooding and desiccation periods, when a salt crust is formed. The brackish to hypersaline habitats showed salinity gradients from 2-90 ppt (NaCl) to saturation, pH values from 7.0 to 10.5...