Rehabilitation of coral reef-fish communities: the importance of artificial-reef relief to recruitment rates

摘要

The present study demonstrates that, when considering artificial reefs as potential tools to assist restoration of degraded coral reefs, the construction of complex vertical struc- tures is preferable over low-relief ones to achieve rapid recruitment of coral reef fish. Previous studies have demonstrated that the coral reef fish assemblage on unplanned Vertical artificial structures in Eilat, Red Sea, have higher abundance and species rich- Ness than nearby natural reefs. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that high Relief artificial reefs had higher recruitment of coral reef fishes mainly planktivores, than Near-bottom low-relief artificial reefs.