Freshwater

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It was a great surprise to us when we arrived in Oman in the summer of 2001 to discover so many freshwater fishes in the wadis and pools of the mountain areas. We decided after a visit to Bani Khalid, where we spotted several different species, to find out more about them. We soon found that there is a dearth of information available, and that we were unable to put names to the various species we saw - it occured to us that many other visitors to the the magnificent mountain pools may have been just as frustrated by the lack of available information as ourselves - so we decided to divert our attention from the Sea for a while, and collect as much information as we can on freshwater fish fauna of Oman, and make it readily available to the many wadi-bashers and interested amateur naturalists of Oman through this webpage.

A photograph is worth a thousand words - there are few deep pools where we can just jump in with an underwater camera, so in most cases we have to catch a specimen and photograph it in a small portable aquarium. So the blue backgrounds you see in some of the photos do not represent blue water !

We do not intend to be technical in our descriptions of species - our aim is to satisfy curiosity - however, we have called on our friends in the ichthyology world for 'best guesses' on identifications - an ichthyologist , understandably, will not commit to a 100% positive identification without examing a specimen - thus, all our identifications are tentative, informed, best guesses. We would welcome any comments and corrections.

If you can help us to confirm these identifications, please let us know through the guestbook, or rfmfield@lycos.com.

The species for which we have found records for Oman are listed below (with links to photos where available):

Garra barreimiae Fowler & Steinitz, 1956	Garra barreimiae shawkahensis	Garra barreimiae barreimiae	Garra barreimiae gallagheri
Garra longipinnis Banister & Clarke 1977	Cyprinion microphthalmum Day, 1880	Cyprinion microphthalmum muscatensis Boulenger, 1888	Garra dunsirei Banister, 1987
Aphanius dispar dispar (Female) (Male) Ruppell, 1828

The species that we have found, but have not been able to find Oman records of (these may be recently introduced species, or species that simply have not been reported):