Not AvailableTropical trawling fi sheries are often implicated with the generation of large quantities of by-catch. The
Sindhudurg coast of Maharashtra is an important trawl landing centre along the West coast and about 317
trawlers operate from three major landing centres of this region. Square mesh codends are widely tested and recommended as effective gear based on technical measure for the reduction of by-catch, often constituted
by juveniles of commercially important species, and affecting the fi shery. This paper reports the results of a study conducted along the Sindhudurg coast using square and diamond mesh codends of 30 mm size and 1.25 mm thickness.A total of 38 hauls using diamond mesh and 44 using square mesh codends were used for the analysis. The mean CPUE – Catch Per Unit Effort, (kg.h.-1) for diamond mesh (18.77) and square mesh codend (19.48)fi tted trawls, were not signifi cantly different (KruskalWallis chi-squared = 0.058711, df = 1, p-value = 0.81).The increase in the mean length of 12 out of the 15 commercially important species studied increased by 7.85%. The rate of escape was 0.76 kg per hour, from the square mesh codends, which is 3.9% of the total catch (2,142.4 kg) retained and valued at INR 28.5 per haul. By-catch generated per haul, was significantly higher during the months of December (43.5±9.3 SD) and January (56.3±17.1 SD) and the by-catch during months of September, October and November were less than 20.0 kg/haul. The study concludes that installation of square mesh codends did not affect the performance of the gear. The selection properties of the trawl net improved and no significant loss was incurred due to the use of square mesh codends. Though, mesh size optimization for multiple species in the codend and the modelling for the future value of the escapees were not worked out, based on the analysis carried out, it is recommended that traditional diamond mesh codends can be replaced with square mesh codends, as an easy and inexpensive technical measure for management of trawl fisheries along the Sindhudurg coast.Not Availabl
