Kategorie: News
Orca offers guests a glimpse into the fish diversity of Soma Bay
To mark its 35th anniversary, Orca is offering its guests something special: the Orca Dive Club Soma Bay and The Breakers Diving and Surfing Lodge Soma Bay now provide a free photo fish guide — featuring exclusively species from the Soma Bay house reef.
Exploration of the Red Sea has a long tradition. One of the early pioneers was the doctor and naturalist Carl Benjamin Klunzinger, who conducted research there between 1863 and 1869 and again from 1872 to 1875. Often working as a doctor in Al-Qusair, he travelled along the coast and through the Nile Valley, laying the foundations for coral reef ecology with his precise observations. Decades later, Hans Hass also drew on Klunzinger’s work — for instance, whilst preparing for his journey to Port Sudan, as he recounts in ‘Manta – Teufel im Roten Meer’ (1952).
More recently, numerous researchers have described new species and documented behaviours. Few, however, have gone into the water as directly as the zoologist Hans Fricke, known for his yellow research submarines and the first live recording of a coelacanth. Fricke undertook his first trip to the Red Sea in 1962 — at that time still by bicycle along the coast to Koseir, a contrast to today’s fast flight connections.
Technology has also changed: where once a tent, notebook and homemade underwater housing were necessary, today a smartphone in a protective case is often sufficient. And this is precisely what gives every diver the chance to contribute as a ‘citizen scientist’. Many reefs remain poorly documented; photos and shared observations help to make changes visible — particularly in the context of climate change.
Free eBooklet documents 134 species and invites divers to contribute further as citizen scientists
Against this backdrop, a systematic effort began to photograph fish at the Soma Bay house reef — under the motto: Every photo counts. In collaboration with Prof. Dr Ralph Schill, students from the University of Stuttgart and participants in Science Week in Soma Bay, an extensive collection has been compiled, which also serves as an identification guide. To date, 39 families of fish comprising 90 genera and 134 species have been recorded on the house reef — a biodiversity that is likely to surprise many guests right on the hotel’s doorstep.
The eBooklet “Coral Reef Fish Diversity at the Soma Bay House Reef” is available free of charge to guests at the Orca Dive Club Soma Bay and The Breakers Diving and Surfing Lodge Soma Bay — to browse on site and as a PDF download. The project is set to grow further: anyone who photographs a fish not yet listed can send their pictures to info@aquatil.org. Perhaps the reef still has a surprise or two in store.
Further information:
Orca Dive Club Soma Bay
Aquatil (Citizen Science Project)