Rocky Bottom

Rocky bottom Long Term Ecological Researcher in action

The rocky reef habitat of Israel’s coastline rich and diverse, and abundant in marine resources for our country. It functions as a stable habitat to alga, invertebrates, and fish, however, our knowledge of this magnificent habitat is very limited and, until now, the research scope has been limited. We aim to tackle these issues, and to initiate a long-term ecological research (LTER) programme, with laboratories set along the north-south coastline. Since 2014, we are collecting data on the reefs of Achziv, Naharia and Sdot Yam at three different depth levels (10, 25 and 45 meters), and recently we added the sites of Ashdod and Ashkelon, sampling at 30 meters depth. We collect community and coverage data on fish, invertebrates, and alga and intend to follow changes in space and time at our coastline. We hope that this knowledge will encourage researchers to investigate this habitat and will serve as a good baseline for further research, to enhance our knowledge of the marine ecosystem and apply this towards effective policy in Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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