Observations on the fishing potentiality of the shelf and slope waters along the s. w. coast of India based on the fishing results of IFP vessels

Availability of resources is perhaps the most important factor which determines the success of any Industry. In the case of fishing industry. the availability of fishable concentration of fishes and other marine life assumes great significance since the success of the fishing operation is entirely dependant on the availability of resources which can be effectively exploited with the fishing equipment carried on board

Fishable concentrations of fishes and crustaceans in the offshore and deep sea areas of the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone based on observations made onboard FORV Sagar Sampada

Bottom trawling data of FORV Sagar Sampada pertaining to a total of 350 fishing hauls with a duration of 330 effective trawling hours for depths beyond 40 m was utilized in the present study. Abundance of selected fishery resources such as threadfin bream, bull's eye, drift fish, lizard fish, ribbon fish, cat fish, barracudas, mackerel, deep sea prawns and deep sea lobster in the offshore and deep sea waters of the Indian EEZ in space and time is indicated

Study on the induced maturation of the Indian pearl oyster Pinctada fucata (Gould) at Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, India

In the induced maturation experiments of the pearl oyster Pinctada fucata (Gould), 7.5 ± 3.54%, 6.67% and 15 ± 7.07% fully mature pearl oysters were obtained on day 43, 42 and 36 in oysters fed with mixed algae (T-1), mixed algae and raw corn flour (T-2), mixed algae and raw rice flour (T-3), respectively under laboratory conditions. Among the treatments, it was observed that the (T-3) mixed algae with raw rice flour gave the best results with pearl oysters maturing 62.5 ± 7.08% under laboratory conditions on day 29 itself. Whereas, 35 % ± 7.07 % of fully mature pearl oysters were obtained on the 15th day and 36th day from the farm and laboratory, respectively and none in the non fed. Of the matured animals, 43.33% of stage III animals fed on mixed algae changed to stage IV within 19 days, while gonad of 40 ± 14.14% of pearl oysters without feeding changed to stage IV within 26 days under laboratory conditions. Maturity of 53.12 ± 11.97% pearl oysters did not change when maintained in the farm conditions within 24 days

Growth and maturity of Indian oil sardine Sardinella longiceps (Valenciennes, 1847) along southwest coast of India

Growth studies are important to determine the total recruitment of fish with respect to time while information on age and length at first maturity are essential to assess the spawning stock. The present communication deals with growth, maturity and mortality parameters of Indian oil sardine Sardinella longiceps from southwest coast of India. Length at first maturity of oil sardine was found to be 15.7 and 15.2 cm for male and female, respectively. Comparison of length at first maturity of oil sardine with earlier studies showed only minor variations. The growth parameters L∞, K, and age at zero length (t0) were calculated as 19.8 cm, 1.14 yr-1 and -0.0464 respectively. From the VBG equation, the length attained at the end of I, II and III year is estimated as 13.79, 17.87 and 18.9 cm respectively. Two peaks of recruitment to the fishery were observed. The values of total mortality (Z), natural mortality (M) and fishing mortality (F) estimated are 4.33, 2.7 and 1.6 respectively. The exploitation rate was found to be 0.37

InterProScan: protein domains identifier

InterProScan [E. M. Zdobnov and R. Apweiler (2001) Bioinformatics, 17, 847–848] is a tool that combines different protein signature recognition methods from the InterPro [N. J. Mulder, R. Apweiler, T. K. Attwood, A. Bairoch, A. Bateman, D. Binns, P. Bradley, P. Bork, P. Bucher, L. Cerutti et al. (2005) Nucleic Acids Res., 33, D201–D205] consortium member databases into one resource. At the time of writing there are 10 distinct publicly available databases in the application. Protein as well as DNA sequences can be analysed. A web-based version is accessible for academic and commercial organizations from the EBI (). In addition, a standalone Perl version and a SOAP Web Service [J. Snell, D. Tidwell and P. Kulchenko (2001) Programming Web Services with SOAP, 1st edn. O'Reilly Publishers, Sebastopol, CA, ] are also available to the users. Various output formats are supported and include text tables, XML documents, as well as various graphs to help interpret the results

Marine Ornamental Fishes

Ornamental fishes are fascinating for their brilliant and attractive colouration/pattern, tiny size and their ability to adapt in confined aquarium tanks. These fishes are a fancy for the people all over the world and aquarium fish keeping has been developed as a hobby by many. The world ornamental fish industry has been growing rapidly over the years. The total turnover, has been estimated over 5 billion US $, of which India's contribution is less than 1%

Lobsters

Among marine crustaceans, lobsters are the most highly priced ones and of significant commercial interest in many countries. Due to their increasing demand as a favourite of epicurean gourmets, lobsters have captured excellent markets in developed countries. Lobster fishing, therefore, is practised on intensive scale throughout the world and a stage has com e that most of the traditional lobster stocks are under heavy exploitation now. According to World Fishery Statistics, the annual lobster production of the world during 1981 - 1990 period ranged from 1.8 lakh tonnes in 1982 to 2.3 lakh tonnes in 1989, thereby showing an increase of only 28% over the years. The average annual production of about 2.1 lakh tonnes of lobsters, which included 1.9 lakh tonnes of spiny lobsters and allied species (92%) and 0.2 lakh tonnes of squat lobsters (8 %), form ed 6 % of the world crustacean landings from the marine sector. The contribution of the form er group from Indian Ocean region for the same period was about 60,000 tonnes on an average of which over 70% was recorded in the Western Indian Ocean mainly from the coasts of South Africa, Om an and Republic of Yemen. India landed an average of about 24,000 tonnes, of which nearly 90% came from the west coast

Distribution of sea weeds off Kattapadu - Tiruchendur coast, Tamil nadu

The present paper deals with the distribution of seaweeds and seagrasses during the deep sea survey conducted in the first sector from Kattapadu to Tiruchendur in Tamil Nadu coast between December 1986 and March 1987 covering an area of 650 sq.km. In thiS survey. 58 species of marine algae \\ere recorded. of which 7 belong to Chlorophyta. 12 to Phaeophyta and 39 to Rhodophyta. Three species of seagrasses vi z. Cymodocea serrl/lata. Halophila ovails and H. ovala were also recorded at the depths ranging from 5.5 to 21.5 III Halim eda macroloba, D,ClyOIO barlayresiana, D. Maxima, Gracliaria corl/cala var. corlicala, G. edulis, Sarcodia indica, Sarconema filiform e, Soliena rob"sla, flypnea esperi and H. "alenliae were found to be dominant and widely distributed. Hydrological data were also collected from area surveyed. The atmospheric and bottom water temperature varied from 25.0 to 36.8'C and 26.0 to 31.8'C respectively. The pH ranged from 8.3 to 8.6 and the salinity from 26.39 to 33.430/00 . The dissolved oxygen ranged from 3A2 to 6.47 mill. The phosphate content varied from 0.05 to 0. 15 I'g atm/ l, silicate from 4.00 to 12.00 I'g atmll, nitrate from 0.25 to 1.00 I'g at mil and nitrite from 1.05 to 3.99 I'g atml l