ANALYSIS OF FISH COMMUNITY AT THE FIRST ARTIFICIAL REEF IN MOROCCO (MARTIL, MEDITERRANEAN)

A pioneering project of artificial reefs was deployed in the northern Morocco (Mediterranean) for the first time in 2012 as a innovative marine natural resources management measure aiming to protect coastal habitat, conserve biodiversity but most importantly improve fisheries catches for an eventual socio- economical impact on the locals. To assess the reef attraction of fish fauna to the structure and understand the assemblage structure post deployment, Seasonal samplings were conducted from July 2012 to June 2014 in 6 different stations of the Martil Artificial Reef. The present study aims to analyze the artificial reef of Martil after two years of scientific monitoring by obtaining a first assessment of the fish assemblage in terms of species composition, abundance and biomass. A total of 16 fish species were identified.The abundance and biomass of the identifiedspeciesshows a variation in evolution, the Shannon-wiener and evenness indexes have gradually increased indicating that stabilization of the Martil artificial reef community is a slow and long term process. For some species,the reefacts as aprotection area, for others, it is a reproduction area.