Preliminary study on attaching effect of benthic algae on different reef models

We placed some artificial reef models of different materials (concrete, coal ash, rubber, fiber reinforced plastic, abalone shell, oyster shell and iron sheet) and of different shapes (round sunken, round protruding, serrated sunken and serrated protruding) in the intertidal zone to study the attaching effect of benthic algae. The results show that: 1) Amongthe 6 samplings during 4.5 months,3 phylums and 13 algae species are were found on the models, among which Ulvaceae and Enteromorpha are dominant species. 2) The algae attached most on the models of concrete and coal ash, and the average coverage rate is 65.7% and 65.0%, respectively. The average coverage rate of rubber, fiber reinforced plastic, abalone and oyster shells is 46.2%, 17.8%, 26.5% and 32.3%, respectively. The algae attach least on the model of iron sheet with only 3% coverage rate. 3) The algae attached significantly more on protruding and flat models than on sunken ones (P0.05). 4) The coverage rate on the models presents a high-low-high trend.