Fish biodiversity of Indian Exclusive Economic Zone

Indian fisheries have a long history, starting with Kautilya’s Arthasastra describing fish as a source for consumption and provide evidence that fishery was a well-established industry in India and fish was relished as an article of diet as early as 300 B.C, the ancient Hindus possessed a considerable knowledge of the habit of fishes and the epic on the second pillar of Emperor Ashoka describing the prohibition of consumption of fish during a certain lunar period which can be interpreted as a conservation point of view. Modern scientific studies on Indian fishes could be traced to the initial works done by Linnaeus, Bloch and Schneider, Lacepède, Russell and Hamilton. The mid 1800s contributed much in the history of Indian fish taxonomy since the time of the expeditions was going through. Cuvier and Valenciennes (1828-1849) described 70 nominal species off Puducherry, Skyes (1839), Günther (1860, 1872, 1880) and The Fishes of India by Francis Day (1865-1877) and another book Fauna of British India Series in two volumes (1889) describing 1,418 species are the two most indispensable works on Indian fish taxonomy to date. Alcock (1889, 1890) described 162 species new to science from Indian waters

Marine biodiversity: An important resource base to develop bioactive compounds for health and diseases

A bioactive compound means a substance which has a biological activity. The definition of bioactive compounds takes different dimensions like deriving from nature or synthetic, compounds usually occur in small quantity, adhere potential effect on human health. It is well known that many organism like sponge, jellyfish, fish, coral, mussels, bivalves, sea hare, seahorse, crustacean, marine plants and turtles yield bioactive compounds of great importance to human welfare. The long coastline of 8129 Km2 with an EEZ of 2.02 million Sq. km including the continental shelf of 0.5 million Sq. Km harbors extensively rich multitude of species. Vast regions of mangroves are found along the coast of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andaman Islands which extends up to about 682000 ha area. Coral reefs are found in the Gulf of Kutch, along the Maharashtra coast, Kerala coast, in the Gulf of Mannar, Palk Bay and the Wadge Bank along the Tamilnadu coast and around Andaman and Lakshadweep Islands. The variety of coastal ecosystems include brackish water lakes, lagoons, estuaries, back waters, salt marshes, rocky bottom, sandy bottom and muddy areas provides a home and shelter for the mega biodiversity of India. These regions support very rich fauna and flora and constitute rich biological diversity of marine ecosystems. This great mega diversity of abundant species along the Indian marine ecosystems provided immense opportunity for the exploration and utilization of the bioactive compounds

സ്‌പോഞ്ചുകൾ വൈവിധ്യത്തിന്റെ സേവന സ്രോതസ്സ്

സ്‌പോഞ്ചുകൾ വൈവിധ്യത്തിന്റെ സേവന സ്രോതസ്സ

Designing a Home Health Provisioning System

A Home Health Provisioning System (HHPS) is not widely prevalent in India as in the developed countries like US. HHPS allows patients’ emergency services and routine primary healthcare services without them actually visiting the hospitals. Itcan be a boon to the aged people and to the handicaps who are facing with the difficulty of transportation. This paper presents an HHPS designed for the Indian customers. This system will contribute to the overall health of the patients by providing more personalized care. The practicing physicians in HHPS will establish a more solid physician-patient relationship by having a provision for longer appointments and round the clock access to doctors. The consultation can be either by video conferencing or the patient can send a detailed health description using web page tabs. The doctor then performs the diagnosis and sends the report to the patient, with necessary medical advices

ചാകര എന്ന മരീചിക

ചാകര എന്ന മരീചി

Ichthyofaunal diversity of India-challenges ahead for a Mega Biodiversity Country In: ICAR Sponsored Winter School on Recent Advances in Fishery Biology Techniques for Biodiversity Evaluation and Conservation, 1-21 December 2018, Kochi.

Indian fish taxonomy has a long history, which started with Kautilya’s Arthasastra describing fish as a source for consumption as early as 300 B.C and the epic on the second pillar of Emperor Ashoka describing the prohibition of consumption of fish during a certain lunar period, which can be interpreted as a conservation point of view. Modern scientific studies on Indian fishes could be traced to the initial works done by Linnaeus in 1758. M.E. Bloch is one of the pioneers in the field of fish taxonomy along with the naturalists, zoologists and botanists who laid the foundation for fisheries research in India such as Bloch and Schneider (1795-1801) and Lacepede (1798-1803). Russell worked on 200 fishes off Vizagapatanam during 1803. Hamilton (1822) described 71 estuarine fishes of India in his work An Account of Fishes Found in the River Ganges and Its Branches. The mid 1800s contributed much in the history of Indian fish taxonomy since the time of the expeditions was going through. Cuvier and Valenciennes work on taxonomy is indispensable to India and described 70 nominal species off Puducherry. Francis Day in the epoch-making book “The Fishes of India: Being a Natural History of the Fishes Known to Inhabit the Seas and Fresh Waters of India, Burma, and Ceylon and another book Fauna of British India Series in two volumes describing 1,418 species are the two most indispensable works on Indian fish taxonomy to date

Taxonomic revision of the fishes of the Genus Bleekeria (Perciformes, Ammodytidae)

Fishes of the family Ammodytidae popularly known as sand lances or sand eels, feed in aggregations on zooplankton over open sand bottom. The Ammodytidae consists of seven genera and two common genera Bleekeria and Ammodytes. There are 11 species recorded in the genus Bleekeria of which only six are valid. The valid ones are Bleekeria kallolepis, B. mitsukurii, B. viridianguilla, B. murtii, B. profunda and B. estuaria. A key for the identification of Bleekeria is prepared. We compared details of the types of all six species of Bleekeria and reviewed the genus Bleekeria. The details of holotype of B. viridianguilla at Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, USA, B. kallolepis at Natural History Museum, London, B. mitsukurii at Californian Academy of Sciences, California, USA, and B. murtii at CMFRI, Museum, Kochi, India, B. profunda and B. estuaria at South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity were collected and compared

Biodiversity Assessment Along the Coast of Central Kerala, India in Relation to Ecosystem Services

Conservation of biodiversity has been a matter of global concern since the event of the World Summit in 1992 and the follow up of Rio+20 in 2012. In order to promote conservation efforts and provide a platform for bioevaluation, special areas of interest along the coasts are evaluated according to their capacity to support and harbour biological diversity. Assessment of biodiversity along the coasts of districts of Alapuzha, Ernakulam and Thrissur of central Kerala was undertaken to ascertain the provisional, regulatory, supporting and cultural services provided and to appraise their ecological sensitivity

Hatching of Olive ridley turtle twin hatchlings

A clutch of 126 olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) turtle eggs was laid at Palapetty Beach, Thrissur District, Kerala on 15th January 2016 and relocated by members of the Kanyakumari Turtle NEWS Club to the hatchery at Palapetty. On 02nd March 2016, after 46 days of incubation, 58 hatchlings emerged from the nest unaided in the early morning. The nest was excavated three hours after emergence of the first hatchling, at which time 14 more hatchlings emerged from the exposed eggs including two pairs of twins (Table 1; for example see Figure 1) which emerged from the eggshells on their own. The hatchlings were transported to a holding tank 15min post-hatching. The twin hatchlings were unable to remain afloat and their movement on land was also impaired as they remained connected by the respective yolk sacs. The first pair of twin hatchlings died half an hour after hatching, while the second pair of twins survived for six hours. Four other hatchlings which emerged from the exposed eggs died before being introduced to the holding tank. The surviving hatchlings were released to sea approximately nine to thirteen hours after hatching

Rare occurrence of the blacksaddled coral grouper

The blacksaddled coral grouper Plectropomuslaevis (Lacepède, 1801) is a member of the familySerranidae and is usually found associated with coralreefs. It occurs in the Indian ocean and tropicalWestern and Central Pacific, but is considered tobe uncommon to rare, except in coral reef environs,throughout its range. It is classified as Vulnerablein the IUCN Red List owing to its natural rarity incoastal seas and substantial decline in populationswherever it is fished in coral reef regions