Status survey of scleractinian corals at Long Island and adjoining areas of Middle Andaman Archipelago

Abstract

Long Island and its adjoining islands of Middle Andaman archipelago are mostly covered by mangrove habitat while the eastern coastal parts of the islands are with scattered fringing reef in the continental shelf region. A total of 253 species of scleractinian corals were recorded from four islands such as Long, Guitar, Round and North Passage with the average species diversity of 3.18 and live cover of 25.28 %. Globally recorded threatened 42 species of scleractinians were recorded from these study areas. The regional occurrence of the species revealed that 32.41 % scleractinian were common and 24.90 % corals were rare. Long Island harbors 29.42 % of scleractinian coral species of Andaman and Nicobar Islands with optimum diversity (H'=4.35) especially in the eastern and south-eastern coast. The present paper focused on the status survey of scleractinian corals from these areas to monitor the health status in Middle Andaman region of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.