Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), the freshwater lake of the Jordan Rift in northern Israel — about 166 km² in area, ~21 km long and up to ~43 m deep, lying roughly 210 m below sea level. It is warm-monomictic, stratifying through the hot summer and mixing in winter. Its native fish include several cichlids: the Galilee 'St. Peter's fish' Sarotherodon galilaeus, blue tilapia Oreochromis aureus, redbelly tilapia Coptodon zillii, the endemic Tristramella simonis, and Astatotilapia flaviijosephi — the only haplochromine cichlid in the Levant and a biogeographic relic of the African lineages (Serruya 1978; Goren & Ortal 1999).
- Maximum depth
- 141 ft
- Length
- 13 miles
- Mixing regime
- Monomictic
- Basin
- Jordan Rift (Jordan River)
- Countries
- Israel
Where every species has been recorded
7 cichlid species across 5 genera have been georeferenced in the lake, drawn from 292 field and museum records. Switch to satellite imagery, or pick a single species to see exactly where it lives.
Occurrence records: GBIF.org (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Each point is a georeferenced observation or specimen; positions carry the source dataset's own coordinate precision.
Sources
Every number on this page is traceable to peer-reviewed research.
- GBIF.org (2026). GBIF Occurrence Download — Cichlidae, African rift lakes. Global Biodiversity Information Facility, www.gbif.org. link
A shoreline of separate worlds
Sea of Galilee does not have one habitat but a mosaic of them, and the boundaries are sharp. A cichlid adapted to grazing algae off boulders may never cross the few metres of open sand to the next reef — which is exactly why so many species here live nowhere else on Earth.
Mapped habitats
Surveyed habitat data for this lake is not loaded yet.