ETRUMEUS GOLANII (ACTINOPTERYGII: CLUPEIFORMES: DUSSUMIERIIDAE) A NEW LESSEPSIAN MIGRANT RECORDED IN MOROCCO, ALBORAN SEA (SOUTH-WEST MEDITERRANEAN)

. The occurrence of a Lessepsian migrant, the Golani round herring, Etrumeus golanii DiBattista, Randall et Bowen, 2012, is reported here for the ﬁrst time from the Alboran Sea (south-west Mediterranean). On May 2018, twenty individuals were caught by a commercial purse-seiner off Fnideq (Morocco), but ﬁve females and two males, were kept by the ﬁsherman for further analyses. This new ﬁnding conﬁrms the expansion of this Lessepsian migrant throughout the Mediterranean Sea.


INTRODUCTION
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 connected the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and allowed a large number of tropical/subtropical marine species to enter the Mediterranean basin. This migration phenomenon has been called Lessepsian migration (DiBattista et al. 2012, Galil et al. 2015. To date, many Lessepsian species have established thriving populations along the eastern Mediterranean coastlines (Galil et al. 2017).
According to a recent study by Zenetos et al. (2017), a total of 821 alien species have been reported in the Mediterranean Sea with the Lessepsian fishes accounting for approximately 100 (Giovos et al. 2018), including the Golani round herring, Etrumeus golanii DiBattista, Randall et Bowen, 2012. Etrumeus golanii is an inshore pelagic fish originally known from the northern region of the Red Sea and now expanding towards the Mediterranean. It is established in the Mediterranean Sea, especially in its eastern part and was widely reported in the literature as "Etrumeus teres". Those erroneously labelled findings later turned out to be a species that is new to science . The above-mentioned misidentification was exposed by DiBattista et al. (2012).
Etrumeus golanii is not restricted to the eastern Mediterranean Sea but it is also present in its central (Italy, Libya and Tunisia) and western (Algeria) parts (Falautano et al. 2006, Boussellaa et al. 2016, Shakman et al. 2017, Stamouli et al. 2017.
This paper reports the first occurrence of Etrumeus golanii for Morocco and the Alboran Sea and the second record of this fish from the western Mediterranean Sea.
All specimens were measured, weighed, and photographed. Morphometric and meristic measurements are presented in Table 1 (Table 1), we have identified our specimens as Etrumeus golanii. All studied specimens were adults with a total length (TL) varying from 252 to 283 mm and net weight varying from 148.66 to 217.39 g (Fig. 2). These specimens were dissected and sexed. Thus, five were identified as females with gonad weighing from 2.57 to 4.48 g and two were males with gonad weight from 1.86 to 6.57 g.

DISCUSSION
To date, there is no evidence of any negative impact of Etrumeus golanii on local fisheries resources.

RESULTS
According to the description given by DiBattista et al.  Table 2) and the new record, determined in this study (star) In conclusion, the recent occurrence of the Golani round herring, Etrumeus golanii, in Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan waters, may be linked to the altering environmental conditions which are gradually becoming more favourable for those fish. In this case, it could be assumed that the establishment of a sustainable population in near future could be expected. Furthermore, the presently reported record confirms, also, the occurrence of this fish species in the Alboran Sea and its expansion throughout the Mediterranean Sea.