International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.44, 1-8
1
Research Article Open Access
Biology and Growth Parameters of Spotted Seerfish -
Scomberomorus guttatus
(Bloch & Schneider, 1801) from North East Coast of India
A. Siva
1
,
, Ansuman Das
1
, Premchand
1
, A.B. Kar
2
, N. Jagannadh
2
, S.K. Pattnayak
2
1 Fishery Survey of India, Mumbai, India
2 Visakhapatnam Base of Fishery Survey of India, Visakhapatnam, India
Corresponding author email
International Journal of Marine Science 2016, Vol.6, No.44 doi
Received: 21 Jun., 2016
Accepted: 10 Jul., 2016
Published: 21 Nov., 2016
This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
:
Siva A., Das A., Premchand, Kar A.B., Jagannadh N., and Pattnayak S.K., 2016, Biology and Growth Parameters of Spotted Seerfish -
Scomberomorus guttatus
(Bloch & Schneider, 1801) from North East Coast of India, International Journal of Marine Science, 6(44): 1-8 (doi
Abstract
Seerfish is one of the most commercially important food fish in India. The production figure of seerfish shows an
increasing trend in the last five decades in the Indian coasts. Among the five species of seerfishes the species
Scomberomorus
commerson
and
S. guttatus
commonly occur in Indian waters. The seerfish production in India during 2011 stands at 48954 t and that
of spotted seerfish was 17535t (35.8%). The exploratory survey results of Fishery Survey of India (FSI) by deploying demersal and
pelagic trawl indicated the dominance of
S. guttatus
(62.2%) in the seerfish catch during the period 2006-10 in the northeast coast of
India. The biological as well as growth and population parameters of a particular species are absolutely needed to manage the fishery
to a sustainable level. Hence in this paper an attempt has been made to analyze the exploratory survey data collected onboard FSI
vessels to study the biology and growth parameters of spotted seerfish
S. guttatus
in the northeast coast of India. The study indicated
that the size range of the species ranged between 16.1-63.5cm fork lengths with 39.1-42cm length group dominated the population.
The male to female ratio was 1:1.6. The length weight relationship was Log W = -1.1283 + 2.4627 Log L (r = 0.91). There were six
stages of maturity and the spawning season was between January and June. The growth parameters such as L∞, K and t
0
were 64.6cm,
0.97 and -0.1532 respectively. The natural mortality was 1.43 and fishing mortality was 1.28. The longevity of the species was
estimated as 2 years. The virtual population analysis (VPA) indicated that the mortality due to natural causes alone was up to 28cm
length suggesting exploitation of smaller specimens. The food and feeding study shows that the species are piscivorous in nature.
Keywords
Spotted seerfish; Abundance; Biology; Growth parameters; Northeast coast of India
Introduction
Seerfishes are considered as one of the high value resources due to high economic return and export markets
(Muthiah, 2002). Among the five species of seer fishes the king seer fish,
Scomberomorus commerson
and Spotted
seer fish,
S. guttatus
are commonly caught in the Indian coast. There was steady increase in the seerfish
production from the Indian seas in the last five decades (1950s to 1990s). During 1980’s to 1990’s in seer fish
production, India was placed third in the world and first among the countries bordering Indian Ocean (Devaraj,
1999). In the Eastern Indian Ocean, seerfish catch have doubled over the decade from 1989 to 1998 (Pillai, 2002).
The spotted seerfish fishery is concentrated mainly in the northern parts of both west and east coast of India
(Muthiah, 2003a). During the last two decades they are mostly exploited by bottom trawlers operating in the
deeper waters beyond 50 to 300m depth (Muthiah, 2003b). Northeast coast of India offers one of the most diverse
fishery resources in Indian Exclusive Economic Zone, (Somvanshi, 2003). The species
Scomberomorus guttatus
contributed 1.6% to the total marine fish landings of India, the average landing being 19,712 t (Prathibha Rohit
and Subhadeep Ghosh, 2012). Information on the abundance, biology and population parameters of fishery
resources are essential for their exploitation to an optimum level as well as for a sustainable fishery. A lot of work
has been done on the fishery, distribution, biology and growth of seerfishes in Indian waters (Naik et al., 1998,
Muthiah et al., 2002, 2003a and 2003b, Kasim et al., 2002, Ghosh et al., 2009, 11 and Prathibha Rohit et al., 2012).
In the present paper an attempt has been made to study the biology of
S. guttatus
with special reference to the growth
parameters by analyzing the exploratory survey data collected onboard the survey vessels of Fishery Survey of India (FSI).
