Red Gorgonian

Photo: Frédéric ANDRE · CC BY-NC

The walls below 25 metres at Mamula are dominated by colonies of red and yellow gorgonian sea fans up to a metre in diameter, each representing decades of incremental growth at approximately 1 centimetre per year. These colonies are key biodiversity hotspots, providing attachment substrate for hydroids, bryozoans, and the eggs of multiple fish species including comber and blennies. They are highly sensitive to elevated temperatures and some of the shallower colonies show bleaching scars from the exceptional summer heat events recorded since 2003.