A preliminary list of ascidians for the island of Trinidad, West Indies

Abstract

The twin-island state of Trinidad and Tobago has a thriving yachting industry with numbers of leisure craft having increased 10-fold from 1980 to 2000. Being geographically outside of the hurricane belt, the islands offer a prime hurricane Caribbean shelter with excellent boating and repair facilities. The Chaguaramas coastline (on the north-west peninsula) has seven (7) anchorages. One of these (the Chaguaramas Bay) was the study site for a survey of hull foulers on recreational boats. In that survey, twenty-seven (27) recreational vessels were sampled for biofoulers, one group being the Tunicates (Ascidiacea). In Trinidad and Tobago little is known about these organisms. Of the eighteen species (18) collected, eight (8) were solitary species and ten (10) were colonial species. Their distribution (all species collected) is wide and they can be found throughout the western Atlantic, the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. This survey is a preliminary one in terms of the ascidian fauna of Trinidad and represents only one (1) sampled habitat (boat hulls). There has however been a previous survey of the Tobago fauna. For completeness, there should be a full survey of the ascidians along Trinidad's coastline including their various habitats (rocky shores, mangroves, seagrass beds, etc.). These new data could be used to determine those species which occur in natural communities in Trinidad as compared with this survey (fouling community). In this paper these preliminary results are however used for comparison with the Tobago fauna.