Fishes of the Arabian Sea Coasts of Oman: Checklist and Biodiversity Analyses

The southern coasts of Oman bordering the Northwest coasts of the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean. They are located at the boundary of several biogeographic regions. This chapter presents the first comprehensive fish checklist ever been made for this part of the world. The shore and the deep fishes were surveyed using several collecting gears. A total of 1016 species of shore and deep fishes representing 3 classes and 30 orders were reported in this study, which they were belonging to 507 genera and contained in 161 families. The species account displays that fish groupings of the Omani coasts of the Arabian Sea have an Indo-Pacific origin, with zoogeographic similarities to the Red Sea, southern Arabia, East Africa, additional parts of the Western Indian Ocean and the wider Indo-Pacific.