Report | February 3, 2022

First record of the non-indigenous sohal surgeonfish Acanthurus sohal (Forsskål, 1775) (Chordata: Acanthuridae) from the Lebanese waters, eastern Mediterranean Sea

The sohal surgeonfish Acanthurus sohal (Forsskål, 1775) is a bony fish belonging to Acanthuridae. Acanthurus sohal is a native species of the Indian Ocean, coming from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf (Vine 1974; Randall 1995; Rezai and Savari 2004).

In the Mediterranean Sea, A. sohal was detected for the first time from Kalymnos Island in the Dodecanese on 13 August 2017 (Giovos et al. 2018). Later, another specimen from Gaza, the southern Levantine Sea, was recorded on 26 November 2018 (Bariche et al. 2019). This note constitutes the first record of the non-indigenous sohal surgeonfish Acanthurus sohal from the Lebanese waters.