Mediterranean Sea Flora and Fauna
Mediterranean Sea fauna covers all the animal life underwater within the Mediterranean Sea, including fish, crustaceans and invertebrates. The Mediterranean Sea flora is the other side, which covers all the plant life present in and around the Mediterranean Sea.
The Mediterranean fish species and the underwater flora covers everything underwater and we have tried to classify these to give a comprehensive identification guide. Dive Gozo’s Mediterranean marine life identification will hopefully assist divers in understanding all the different creatures and plants that they encounter on their dives.
Guide to Mediterranean Fish Life
Mediterranean Sea life is split into different groups the main being fish which are termed as gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. Dive Gozo’s Mediterranean Fish Identification includes all the fish species from the tiny Blenny’s right up to the much larger sharks and rays. How many times have you finished a dive only to ask’ “what was that brightly coloured funny fish?” Within our Mediterranean fish guide our aim is to have a picture of all the fish that you may see on a dive, with both its’ common name and Latin name.
Mediterranean Invertebrate Guide
Mediterranean Sea Species covers many different families both in the vertebrates and invertebrates. Vertebrates are animals that have a backbone such as fish, whereas invertebrates do not. Mediterranean crustaceans which include amphipods, barnacles, crabs, lobsters, sea spiders and shrimp belong to the invertebrate family. Other invertebrates include the families of molluscs, echinoderms (jelly fish), cnidarians (sea cucumbers, sea urchins and star fish, although star fish do have an internal skeleton, but no backbone) and marine worms.
Mediterranean Seaweed Species
The Mediterranean Sea has temperate reefs with mostly soft reefs consisting of seaweed, with sponges and limited bryozoans. Sea grass can be very generally split into red and green as a considerably basic form of categorising them. The most common Mediterranean Seagrass is the Posidonia seagrass which grows prolifically throughout the Mediterranean Sea. However, seagrass is something that is generally overlooked by divers and there are numerous different types, sizes and colours.
