The rocky reef habitat of the Israeli coastline is rich, diverse, and abundant in marine resources. It functions as a stable habitat for algae, invertebrates, and fish. We have been conducting Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) on these reefs since 2015. The surveys are conducted from Achziv to Ashkelon and at a depth range from 10 to 45 m. The first thing that we noticed was a greater variability with depth. In the shallow water, the turf algae are dominating the reefs (Sdot Yam 10 m, 99%) and as you go deeper, the algae assemblages (Sdot Yam 45 m, 86%) become more diverse and there are more invertebrates.

The rocky reef habitat of the Israeli coastline is rich, diverse, and abundant in marine resources. It functions as a stable habitat for algae, invertebrates, and fish. We have been conducting Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) on these reefs since 2015. The surveys are conducted from Achziv to Ashkelon and at a depth range from 10 to 45 m. The first thing that we noticed was a greater variability with depth. In the shallow water, the turf algae are dominating the reefs (Sdot Yam 10 m, 99%) and as you go deeper, the algae assemblages (Sdot Yam 45 m, 86%) become more diverse and there are more invertebrates.

In addition to having more invertebrates in the deeper water, the assemblage is more diverse as we go deeper (monitoring data up to 2016).

One of the best things about LTER is that we don’t need to speculate what the diversity was like in the past and how things have changed over time. For example, when we had just started surveying the reefs of Achziv at 10 m, the invasive species Galaxaura rugose was rare. Today, it is dominating the reefs with 28% coverage in April 2019.