Report of Four Imperative Marine Macrobenthic Fauna from the Gulf of Kachchh, Gujarat, India

Report of Four Imperative Marine Macrobenthic Fauna from the Gulf of Kachchh, Gujarat, India

The coral reef ecosystems world over are in danger of bleaching due to climate change and global warming. These coral reefs because of their high productivity support huge diversity of fauna. These fauna are also likely to face dangers due to coral bleaching and climate change. Hence documenting the rare fauna becomes important. Gulf of Kachchh bestowed with coral reef fauna, forms one of the four major reefs in India. Though the study of Coral reef fauna from Gulf is more than a century old, it is one of the least studied reefs in India. During our visits to Pirotan, Kalumbhar and Asaba peer Islands in the Southern Gulf of Kachchh, we encountered some interesting species; three Sea anemone i.e. Anemonia viridis (Forsskal, 1775), Aiptasia diaphana (Rapp, 1829), Heteractis crispa (Hemprich & Ehrenberg in Ehrenberg, 1834) and one Crab i.e. Actaea savignyii (Milne Edwards, 1834). The sea anemones have not been reported form Gulf of Kachchh reef whereas Crab that was reported in 1970 had not been discovered in recent studies. The present report is probably 2nd record with photographic evidence. This paper describes presence of above four species from islands in the region.