Quantitative and Qualitative Structure of fish fauna in some selected sites
of Syrian marine waters and the new records

• Mohammad Galiya and Amir Ibrahim
• High Institute of Marine research – Tishreen University – Lattakia – Syria.
  Email: tu-himr@scs-net.org
• The Regional Workshop on Marine Sciences & Natural Resources 25-26 May 2004.

Abstract

This paper presents the qualitative & qualitative results obtained from a field study carried on at three sites along Syrian coast during the year 2003, using the commonly available fishing gears.

The study revealed that fish diversity along the Syrian coast was relatively low, where only 114 species were recorded. This number forms 58.5% of the total number of fish assemblage recorded by other previous studies (195 fish record).

The number of local fish species was 97 species; they were classified to local, seasonal, rare and migrant (from the Indian ocean via Swiss canal and from the west Mediterranean). In addition, few other fish species were recoded for the first time in the Syrian coastal marine waters during this study.

The highest quantity of the commercial fish catch in AlBasit area was from Scombridae (28 tone/year -5 species) while the lowest quantity was from the family Mugilidae (1 tone/year - 3 species).