Resilience of Coral Reefs at the southern Egyptian Coast of the Red Sea

Abstract

Twenty nine sites on the reef of the area between House Reef Fantazia Resort to House Reef of Shams Alam Resort, south to city of Marsa Alam, were surveyed. The eleven key resilience factors set by McClanahan et al. (2012) were used to evaluate our studied Reef areas. The resilience rank equals the sum of the resistance rank and recovery rank. The highest resistance ranks 2.66 and the lowest one 2.06 recorded in sites 27 and 28, respectively, while the recovery rank ranged between 1.69 and 2.75 in sites 29 and 26 respectively. Dependably, the resilience rank ranged between 3.86 and 5.15 in sites 29 and 19, respectively. Generally, the sites with high recruitment colonies, coral resistance species, herbivores fishes biomass, and lower algal cover, human impacts had higher resilience rank than the others sites.