Photo (from left): Joseph Borg, David Dandria, Julian Evans, Leyla Knittweis, Patrick J. Schembri

A major work on Maltese ichthyology has just been published in the prominent online journal Diversity by five members of the Department of Biology – Prof. Joseph A. Borg, David Dandria, Dr Julian Evans, Dr Leyla Knittweis and Prof. Patrick J. Schembri.

Entitled “A Critical Checklist of the Marine Fishes of Malta and Surrounding Waters”, the paper assesses the diversity of fishes inhabiting the sea around Malta. The authors compiled a list of species that have been reported to occur in Maltese waters up to December 2022 by critically reviewing earlier publications by foreign and local workers, including the extensive catalogues by the late Guido Lanfranco (to whom the authors dedicate their paper).

Recent works recording newcomer species were also included, as were data from the annual Mediterranean International Trawl Survey (MEDITS) submitted by the Maltese fisheries authorities to the European Commission. Fisheries data transmitted to the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) and local commercial fisheries landings were also considered.

This work, which had been ongoing for a number of years, resulted in a checklist of 412 species confirmed as occurring in Geographical Sub-Area 15, which is the marine area around the Maltese archipelago, as established by the GFCM in 2009.

Another two lists were also compiled: one of species whose occurrence around the islands is probable or possible but which requires confirmation (53 species), and a second list of previously reported species whose occurrence is deemed highly unlikely and which are therefore excluded from the Maltese list (78 species). Newcomer species, which are fishes immigrant to Maltese waters from the Indo-Pacific and from the Atlantic, were identified as such.

These lists are expected to be useful for local conservation and fishery management, as well as at a regional level, by contributing data on the distribution of fishes in the Mediterranean. The checklists are useful tools for fisheries scientists when compiling and checking data from fisheries surveys and catch monitoring, as well as for biodiversity researchers mapping distributions and making biogeographic comparisons.

The paper is available online.