SURVEY OF THE MARINE FISHES IN IRAQ

A survey of fish species in the Iraqi marine waters was carried out for the period from November 2014 to March 2018. The list included 214 species representing 75 families. The family Carangidae dominated the marine fishes in Iraq, which was represented by 24 species, followed by Haemulidae with 11 species, and then Serranidae and Sparidae with nine species for each, while 34 families contained a single species only.


INTRODUCTION
The Arabian Gulf is a semi-enclosed shallow sea located in the subtropical climate.The Gulf is considered biologically impoverished, due to its environmental characteristics, in addition to its young age (Randall, 1995;Jabado et al., 2015).The environments of Iraqi marine waters are fairly different in comparison with other parts of the Arabian Gulf; the Shatt Al-Arab River, which is formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, is considered as a major fresh water discharge into the northwest Arabian Gulf.The potential sources of nutrients and organics in the northwestern Arabian Gulf are Shatt Al-Arab river and its associated marshes (Al-Yamani, 2008;Al-Mudaffar and Mahdi, 2014).The Shatt Al-Arab estuary plays an important role as feeding, nursery and protective grounds for many fish species (Hussain et al., 1999).
The fish species recorded in the Arabian Gulf were derived from the Indian Ocean, besides demonstrating that the Indian Ocean species cover the entire gulf and reaching even its most northern range (Hussain and Naama, 1989).The fish fauna of the Arabian Gulf have been identified by several systematic works (Blegvad and Løppenthin, 1944;Kuronuma and Abe, 1986;Randall, 1995;Assadi andDehgani, 1997, Carpenter et al., 1997;Bishop, 2003;Iwatsuki et al., 2013).
The previous studies in the Iraqi marine waters could be divided into two parts, the first dealing with species composition and seasonal fluctuations either in the inland Iraqi marine waters, like in Khor Al-Zubair (Ali, 1985;Hussain et al., 1988;Hussain and Naama, 1989;Ali and Hussain, 1990;Hussain et al., 1994) and Khor Abdullah (Younis, 1990;Hussain and Younis, 1997), and the second dealing with classification of fishes or checklist in the regional Iraqi waters (Khalaf, 1961;Mahdi, 1962;Mahdi and Georg, 1969;Al-Daham, 1982;Mohamed et al., 2001).http://dx.doi.org/10.26842/binhm.7.2018.15.2.0163The aim of the present study is to update the list of marine fish species based on a survey in them from the Iraqi marine waters for the period from November 2014 till March 2018.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fish samples were collected from the Iraqi marine waters (29° 46' 50"N 48° 39' 46" E to 29° 78' 83"N 48° 75' 78"E) (Map 1), northwest of the Arabian Gulf during the period from November 2014 to March 2018, by using a fishing boat supplemented by trawl net; also the fish samples were collected from commercial fisheries, through coordination and cooperation with fishermen of the region, which used different fishing nets, benthic trawl nets, fixed gill nets, gill nets (mesh 78×78 mm, 67×67 mm, 57×57 mm, 48×48 mm, 42×42 mm, 33×33 mm, 30×30 mm and 28×28 mm), traps with different circular base (2 m, 2.5 m and 4 m) and fish hooks, as well from commercial fishery of Al-Nasr society for the fishing and marketing of marine fish in Al-Faw district, 100 km south of Basrah city.
Fish species were identified depending on Kuronuma and Abe (1986); Carpenter et al. (1997) and Froese and Pauly (2018).The fish images were taken by Canon SX600 HS.The arrangement of higher taxa (Classes, Orders and Families) of fishes followed Nelson (2006).

Map (1):
Fishing area in the Iraqi marine waters.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A total of 214 species belonging to 75 families and 21 orders were recorded from the Iraqi marine waters (Tab.1), (Pl. 1 and 2 showed some species).The number of cartilaginous fish species (Class: Elasmobranchii) was 16 species and the number of bony fish species (Class: Actinopterygii) was 198 species; the order Perciform dominated the ichthyofauna of the Iraqi marine waters, which is represented by 36 families and 132 species.A total of 34 families contained a single species only, 16 families contained two species and seven families contained three species, the remaining families were represented by more than three species.The most successful fish families are Carangidae (11.21%) which contains 24 species, followed by Haemulidae (5.14%) with 11 species, while Serranidae and Sparidae (4.20%) in the third place each is represented by nine species per each, then Sciaenidae and Lutjanidae (3.73%) with eight species each.
The previous studies have developed a database for the identification of marine fish species in Iraqi marine waters, but they have been based on fisheries or have been short term studies.The most prominent study about ichthyofauna of Iraqi marine waters was carried out by Mohamed et al. (2001) for the period 1995-1999, by using two fishing boats; they recorded 116 species belonging to 58 families.The present study is the next study of Mohamed et al. (2001) about ichthyofauna of the Iraqi marine waters; the number of species reached 214 which belong to 75 families; the increase in fish species in the present study could be due to using different fishing gears at different depths by the fishermen.On the other hand, this increase in the number of species may be due to modifications in Iraqi marine habitat outside its control.The quantity of freshwater discharges into the northwest Arabian Gulf varies from time to time, as the construction of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Turkey and decreased the discharge of Karun river; the various species were distributed in the northwestern Arabian Gulf as could be expected in view of salinity variations, different topography and muddy substratum (Mohamed et al., 2001).
The Perciform is considered to be the largest order within the teleost fishes (Nelson, 2006), this order dominates the ichthyofauna in northwest of the Arabian Gulf (Khalaf, 1961;Mahdi, and Georg, 1969;Al-Daham, 1982;Kuronuma, and Abe, 1986;Bishop, 2003), and which is represented by 36 families and 132 species in the present study.
The most successful fish family in the Iraqi marine waters was Carangidae, represented by 24 species, this number is likely to increase, where were occurrence 32 species in Kuwait (Bishop, 2003) and 40 species in the Arabian Gulf (Carpenter et al., 1997).This applies to the rest of families as Haemulidae, Serranidae, Sparidae and Sciaenidae.
This study provided an updating list of the ichthyofauna of Iraqi marine waters as to be a base for various studies in the future.

Table ( 1
): List of fish species from the Iraqi marine waters.