Auxis thazard, commonly known as frigate tuna
represents an important group of coastal tuna species
occurring in the Indian waters. The species is landed all
along the Indian coastline and the major landing is along
the south-west coast with Kerala contributing the most. The
species is exploited by a variety of gears viz., drift gill nets,
shore seines, ring seines and hooks and lines. Though there
is recent information on the fishery and the exploitation
status of Auxis thazard from Tuticorin (Kasim, 2002;
Abdussamad et al., 2005) and Veraval (Ghosh et al., 2010),
studies on the catch, population characteristics and stock
estimates covering the entire coasts of India are lacking
after the work of Silas et al. (1985) and James et al. (1993).
These studies date back to two decades, after which there
has been a change in the fishing pattern of coastal tunas
throughout the country. Therefore, the present study was
undertaken to provide an insight into the fishery, population
dynamics and stock structure of A. thazard exploited from
Indian water
