Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

The aim of the present work is to catalogue the upper subtidal and intertidal brown phytobenthos inhabiting three different coastal areas nearby Essaouira city, extended between 31° 52' N - 9° 75' W North and 31° 49' N - 9° 76' W South. This checklist of Pheophyceae is among the first revised and updated checklist for almost 20 years on the Atlantic Moroccan coastline. A total of 73 taxa belonging to 39 genera were recorded, with an increase of 15% in algal species compared to previous studies. Additionally, the benthic macroalgal species collected in different seasons of the year are shown, as well as a comparative analysis of the Ecological State Groups (ESG) and their Recovery Index (RI) for the three sampled coastal areas. The ecological data showed that the state of health of the reference station (S1) is good, in comparison to the other two impacted ones (S2 and S3), since the percentage of sensitive species in S1 (51%) is much higher than those in S2 (7%) and S3 (21%).