Different habitats, different stories
Çandarlı Bay is not a single uniform dive environment. Rocky surfaces, soft seabeds and seagrass areas may support different marine communities. A marine species recorded by scientists in the broader bay should not automatically be advertised as visible at every dive site.
The sixty-species study
A peer-reviewed paper published in 2014 reported sixty fish species from bottom-trawl sampling at five stations during 2003–2004: forty-nine bony and eleven cartilaginous fish species. The research documents historical biodiversity in the bay, not a present-day wildlife guarantee or an inventory of shallow rocky dive locations.
Seagrass and life on rocks
Posidonia oceanica is a flowering marine plant, not a seaweed. Seagrass meadows play important habitat roles and can be sensitive to anchoring and coastal disturbance. Sponges and other attached organisms also deserve attention; not every colorful growth on a rock is coral. Photographers should keep good buoyancy and avoid touching or moving marine organisms.
Our photo-record approach
We plan to catalogue photographs with a date, verified location label, photographer credit, image permission and species-identification confidence. A photograph identified only as “somewhere near Çandarlı” should never be used to prove that a particular species lives at a named dive site.
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Sources: 2014 fish study · Ege University, Posidonia
Sources and further reading
Read each source within its date and scope. These references do not establish current local diving conditions or individual fitness to dive.