A new species of the perciform fish genus Symphysanodon (Symphysanodontidae) from the Arabian Sea off the southwestern coast of India

Symphysanodon xanthopterygion, new species, reported herein from 15 specimens collected near Quilon, India, off the Kerala Coast in the southeastern Arabian Sea, becomes the twelfth described species in the genus. The following characters in combination distinguish S. xanthopterygion from its congeners: parapophyses present on first caudal vertebra, total number of gillrakers on first arch 38 to 42, tubed lateral-line scales 54 to 59, sum of lateral-line scales plus total number of gillrakers in individual specimens 94 to 101, head length 33 to 37% SL, head depth 18 to 21% SL, snout length 5 to 6% SL, body depth 24 to 27% SL, lower caudal-fin lobe bright yellow

Preliminary study on the length-weight relationship of Sacura boulengeri (Heemstra, 1973) from Indian waters

Sacura boulengeri (Heemstra, 1973) is a rare serranid fish (Subfamily: Anthiinae) having very distinct distribution in the western Indian Ocean. The rarity of the species is evident from earlier reports and, so far, no related studies on the species have been published except on taxonomy and distributional records. In the present investigation, the length-weight relationship of Sacura boulengeri was estimated to be W = 0.0777 × L2.690 (with 95% confidence intervals for b and r2). An analysis of the stomach contents revealed that sergestid shrimps and copepods were the major food items of the diet

First record of the Garman's lanternfish Diaphus garmani (Family: Myctophidae) from Indian waters

The myctophid Diaphus garmani is recorded for the first time from Indian waters. Three specimens (54-59 mm standard length) were collected from deep sea shrimp trawlers off Quilon, southwest coast of India, between 80 -110 N and 740-760 E, at depths from 250 to 450 m

Lanternfishes (Myctophids): by-catch of deepsea shrimp trawlers operated off Kollam, south-west coast of India

By-catch and discards have received a great deal of scientific attention, their minimisation being a goal of marine fisheries management (Powers, 2006). The Nordic workshop (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2003) defined by-catch as “the proportion of the catch which is taken on the board, or brought to the surface by the vessel and which is subsequently thrown back to sea, dead or dying or likely to die”. Most of the earlier studies deal with optimisation of fishing efficiency and minimisation of fishing impact, but by-catch and discards data have rarely been used to learn about the distribution, abundance and biology of the incidental species being caught, although several recent studies have indicated the informative value of by-catch concerning food habits (Koen Alonso et al., 2001), feeding ecology (Rheeder and Sauer, 1998) and recruitment indices (Payne et al., 2005)

Myctophid fishery along the Kerala coast with emphasis on population characteristics and biology of the headlight fish, Diaphus watasei Jordan & Starks, 1904

Myctophids form bycatch in deep sea shrimp trawls with an annual average catch of 2668 t during 2009 - 2011 in Kerala coast. Fishery occurred almost round the year with peak during November - February. Fishery and biology of the dominant species, Diaphus watasei was monitored. Peak spawning and recruitment of the species was during January-August. Growth parameters L∞ and K are estimated as 15.06 cm and 0.8 per year respectively. These values indicate that the species growth is relatively fast. Natural mortality estimate (M) is 1.21, total mortality (Z) 1.68 and fishing mortality (F) 0.47. The exploitation rate (E) is low being 0.279. These indicate that the stock is at its initial stage of exploitation and there is large scope for enhancing their commercial exploitation. The stock abundance, biomass and distribution of the resource need to be assessed. These factors have to be taken into consideration while planning for exploitation of myctophids in future

Distribution of heterotrophic bacterioplankton in the Indian sector of Southern Ocean

Study was carried out on the distribution of bacterioplankton in the Indian sector of Southern Ocean. Total Heterotrophic Bacterial (THB) counts were maximum (107x104/CFU/ml) in water samples collected from 200 m depth and lowest (15.1x103/CFU/ml) at 3730 m. Of the 250 strains isolated from the water samples, 9.2% were gram positive and 4.8% gram negative. The important genera encountered were Pseudomonas, Aeromonas, Vibrio, Acinetobacter, Micrococcus, Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, Flavobacterium, Chromobacterium, Moraxella, Bacillus and Planococcus. Most of the isolates (94%) were capable of lipase production followed by gelatinase (40%) and amylase (32%)

Demographics of a heavily exploited deep water shark Echinorhinus cf. brucus (Bonnaterre, 1788) from the south-eastern Arabian Sea

In the absence of direct consumption importance and considering as low value bycatch, many vulnerable non-target species, especially slow growing deep water fauna, are overlooked in tropical fisheries research and management. The bramble shark Echinorhinus cf. brucus (Bonnaterre, 1788) is one such species, subjected to a significant non-targeted deepwater fishery off southern India. A length frequency based stock assessment of bramble shark caught in trawl fisheries from the south-eastern Arabian Sea suggests that, E. cf. brucus is a moderately slow growing (K=0.12 year-1) and moderately long lived shark species (Tmax = 25 years, L∞= 333 at corresponding age of 55 years) which is overexploited (M=0.17, Z=0.39) in the region. In view of resilience capacity and vulnerability of deep sea fisheries, improved research and monitoring programmes are urgently required to ensure a sustainable future for India’s expanding deep sea and distant water fisheries

Deep-sea chondrichthyan composition and abundance in Andaman waters, Indian EEZ-preliminary results based on exploratory survey

Two deep-sea fishery surveys were conducted during 2015 to explore the fish diversity and fishing grounds. Seven deep sea bottom trawl operations were conducted using HOT and HSDT-IInets

System Software Abstraction Layer - much more than Operating System Abstraction Layer

Current and future aircraft systems require real-time embedded software with greater flexibility compared to what was previously available due to the continuous advancements in the technology leading to large and complex systems. Portability of software as one of the aspects of this flexibility is a major concern in application development for avionics domain for fast development and integration of systems. Abstractions of the hardware platform which have been already introduced by the operating system community allow the software modules to be reused on different hardware and with different physical resources. Now operating system community has come up with an abstraction layer called operating system abstraction layer (OSAL) which along with the hardware abstraction unifies the OS architecture too. It provides a common set of primitives independent of the underlying operating system and its particular architecture. Factors such as reliability, scalability and determinism of any application largely depend on the design and architecture of the application. This is the most important and critical factor of real time systems such as mission computers of avionics systems, missile control system or control computers of space shuttle. It demands developer to perform feasibility of different software architecture to select the best alternative. Authors’ analysis shows that to make any real time application more secure, scalable, deterministic, and highly portable, OSAL has to be extended to more than just operating system abstraction. This new view of OSAL will be called as system software abstraction layer (SSAL). In this paper, authors attempt to highlight the efficiency of SSAL as well as detailed description of its main features and design considerations. Authors have implemented the SSAL on top of two well known OS (WinCE and Vxworks) and performed extensive evaluations, which shows that it effectively reduces portability efforts while achieving simplicity, predictability, security and determinism. This paper presents in brief, the API functionalities, its components, implementation, interfaces, advantages and overheads along with a case study.Defence Science Journal, 2013, 63(2), pp.214-222, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.63.426

Review of the fishes of the genus Pempheris (Perciformes: Pempheridae) of India, with description of a new species and a neotype for P. mangula Cuvier

The pempherid fishes, or sweepers, of the genus Pempheris are represented in the seas of India by the following five species: P. flavicycla Randall, Bogorodsky & Alpermann 2013; P. malabarica Cuvier in C. & V. 1831; P. mangula Cuvier 1829, for which a neotype is described; P. sarayu, new species; and P. schwenkii Bleeker 1855, a first record for India. Preliminary research has shown that P. schwenkii consists of a complex of species and/or subspecies. Pempheris molucca Cuvier in C. & V. 1831 is treated as a nomen dubium. A key is provided for the five species of the genus for India, and all are illustrated in color