Surf zone fish abundance and diversity at two sandy beaches separated by long rocky jetties

Abstract

In this work, we evaluated the influence of long rocky jetties (~5 km) on fish abundance and diversity between sheltered and exposed marine sandy beaches. We also described and compared the fish community structure and investigated the relationships between environmental variables and fish assemblages. Fish were collected monthly with a beach seine net from May 2001 to May 2002 at the Cassino and Mar Grosso beaches. Twenty-nine taxa were caught and the fish assemblage showed similar composition between beaches (Sj = 62.1%; %Min = 52.3%), with 18 species in common. Most of the fish were juveniles, mainly young-of-the-year with sizes ≤60 mm total length. Eight species (Trachinotus marginatus, Mugil liza, Brevoortia pectinata, Menticirrhus littoralis, Menticirrhus americanus, Odontesthes argentinensis and Oncopterus darwinii) were the most abundant, accounting for 95.6% of the total catch. At both beaches, only T. marginatus, M. liza and M. littoralis were frequent and abundant, but with some differences in their relative abundance. The canonical correspondence analysis results showed that temperature had the highest correlation with fish abundance. Seasonal changes in fish assemblage structure were evident, with a greater species diversity and abundance in the spring and summer. The overall results indicate that the presence of jetties had no effect on fish assemblages of adjacent sandy beaches. Moreover, differences between beaches were related to some species abundance and not to differences in the number and composition of species between beaches.