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A Survey of the Surf Zone Fish Fauna At Cape Canaveral, Florida. M. Lumsden1, E. Reyier2, R. Lowers2, D. Scheidt 2 1Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw GA, 2Dynamac Corporation, Kennedy Space Center, FL.

   Surf zone and nearshore habitats of Cape Canaveral, Florida, are home to many kinds of sea life including dozens of fish species. However, a species list of the ichthyofauna has been never been made within longshore troughs and adjacent open surf habitats off of KSC and Cape Canaveral AFS. A species checklist is essential as a baseline for future comparison studies of the beach area ecosystem. Nearshore beach surveys were conducted using a 15.2-meter seine net to collect and positively identify the samples of the fish fauna to create a species checklist. Univariate and Multivariate statistical analyses were employed to investigate if there was variation in overall fish density and community composition between sheltered longshore troughs and adjacent open surf zone habitats. A total of 19,921 fish from 23 distinct species were collected.  Although results demonstrate that longshore troughs possessed approximately 2.2 times the density of fishes, variation within each habitat was high. Overall species counts were similar between habitat types, and a multivariate Analysis of Similarities Test did not detect significant differences in community structure.