Laith A. Jawad¹ , Haithem K. Al-Busaidi² , Dawood Al-Mamary³ , Assam Al-Rassadi³ , Juma M. Al-Mamry³

1 Flat Bush, Manukau, Auckland 2016, New Zealand
2 Animal and Plant Genetic Resource Centre, The Research Council (TRC) P O Box 1422 Alathaiba 130, Oman
3 Marine Science Research and Fisheries Centre, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Oman
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 30   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2017.07.0030
Received: 19 Jul., 2017    Accepted: 09 Aug., 2017    Published: 10 Aug., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Jawad L.A., Al-Busaidi H.K., Al-Mamary D., Al-Rassadi A., and Al-Mamry J.M., 2017, Malpigmentation in Diagramma pictum and Pardachirus marmoratus collected from the Arabian Sea coasts of Oman, International Journal of Marine Science, 7(30): 292-296 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2017.07.0030)

Cases of partial hyper pigmentation and malpigmentation were reported from Diagramma pictum and Pardachirus marmoratus collected from the Arabian Sea coasts of Oman. These cases are the first report on color anomalies in these two fish species. Hyper pigmentation spots were observed mainly on the side of D. pictus, while the malpigmentation patch was observed across the body of P. marmoratus. Both cases are not pathological, but they have an economic effects that the melanic or the ambicolored specimens may cause to the fishermen due to being unfavourable by the customers.

Melanosis; Flatfish; Haemulidae; Color aberration; Salalah; Metamorphosis