zaki’s reef is located in the gulf of suez, a narrow portion of the red sea, with exceptionally dry and hot climate and lacks almost all scientific data. this research intends to describe the area’s unique climatology, which may reveal correlations between the reef’s existence at high latitude and extreme climate conditions. air temperature at zaki’s reef fluctuated between 0.3 and 58.6oc with ...

the persian gulf is northern part of the ropme sea area (rsa), and is semi-enclosed shallow sea which located in subtropical climate. measuring is 1000km in length, varying in width 60-340km, and average depth is about 35m and maximum depth is 105m. this research was carried out during 2005-2010 for reviewing the corals status and determination of coral reef habitats distribution in the persian...

As with all coral reef systems, the ecology of Ningaloo Reef is closely linked to water circulation which transport and disperse key material such as nutrients and larvae. Circulation on coral reefs may be driven by a number of forcing mechanisms including waves, tides, wind, and buoyancy effects. Surface waves interacting with reefs have long been known to dominate the currents on many coral r...

Coral reefs and seagrass beds are often located adjacent to one another, but little is known about the degree to which their fish communities are interlinked. To determine whether coral reef fishes on the coral reef are interlinked with or segregated from fishes on adjacent seagrass beds, a 60 m coral reef–seagrass gradient was studied on the island of Zanzibar in the western Indian Ocean. Usin...

In local reef fish communities, species richness increases with increasing reef area. At Ishigaki Island, Japan, species richness is much lower on large reefs in the shallow back reef than that expected from random placement model simulations (RPMS). As three aggressive territorial herbivorous damselfish, Stegastes nigricans, Stegastes lividus and Hemiglyphidodon plagiometopon, coexist only on ...

A sedimentological and stratigraphic study of Low Isles Reef off northern Queensland, Australia was carried out to improve understanding of factors that have governed Late Holocene carbonate deposition and reef development on the inner to middle shelf of the northern Great Barrier Reef. Low Isles Reef is one of 46 low wooded island-reefs unique to the northern Great Barrier Reef, which are situ...

The three-dimensional form of a coral reef develops through interactions and feedbacks between its constituent organisms and their environment. Reef morphology therefore contains a potential wealth of ecological information, accessible if the relationships between morphology and ecology can be decoded. Traditionally, reef morphology has been attributed to external controls such as substrate top...

Long-term (1 month) observations of waves and currents over a natural reef are presented which show a strong correlation between offshore rms incident wave height and cross-reef currents at subtidal frequencies. The energy spectrum of the cross-reef currents shows a significant peak at twice the semidiurnal tidal frequency, while the spectrum of sea surface elevation over the reef flat shows no...

After a pelagic larval phase, settlement-stage coral reef fish must locate a suitable reef habitat for juvenile life. Reef noise, produced by resident fish and invertebrates, provides an important cue for orientation and habitat selection during this process, which must often occur in environments impacted by anthropogenic noise. We adapted an established field-based protocol to test whether re...

Sharks are increasingly being recognized as important members of coral-reef communities, but their overall conservation status remains uncertain. Nine of the 29 reef-shark species are designated as data deficient in the IUCN Red List, and three-fourths of reef sharks had unknown population trends at the time of their assessment. Fortunately, reef-shark research is on the rise. This new body of ...