- International Journal of Pure and Applied Zoology (2014) Volume 2, Issue 2

Present Status and Species Composition of Commercially Important Finfish in Landed Trawl Catch from Bangladesh Marine Waters

Trawl Fishery in Bangladesh started in 1972, is mainly engaged in harvesting demersal fish and shrimp, but in recent years government is being sanctioned new modern mid-water trawlers and long liners to encourage pelagic fishing. This paper looks into ways of species composition of commercially important finfish species in landed trawl catch depicting the trend of stock and efforts to provide available information so that fishery biologists, planners and administrators may take an inclusive resource based management plan for keeping sustainability in marine fishery resources. The secondary data of landed trawl catch of fin fish since 1985-86 to 2012-13 in association with close inspection during landing trawl catch was used. There are more than 90 species of fish which have commercial importance. Intense exploitation with high fishing efforts is the present trend of marine fishery resources. Since after industrialization in country’s marine fishing sector, three phases is visually demarcated (R2=0.744). Phase I indicates from 1985-86 to 1999-2000, phase II from 2000-01 to 2009- 10 and phase III started from 2010-11. The abundance index (CPUE) was in increasing trend (4.05) at phase I where fishing was almost in a virgin stock and down to 2.18 at phase II. At phase III, the CPUE (R2=0.20) is being risen to above 4.0 due to added modern and hi-tech vessels into the fishing fleet together with imposed of strict restriction unreported catch. The number of trawlers engaged in fishing was 14 at the initial stage to 31 the beginning of phase II and sharply increased to 152 in 2012-13. Though, there are various category of vessels engaged in trawl fishing in the Bay of Bengal, grossly categorized into wooden body and steel hull. The CPUE of steel hull trawlers were 4 to 6 times greater than that of wooden body trawlers. Catch ceiling or quota may be enacted to prescribe limitation on the total quantity of fish captured for a specific period of time would be a major step to reduce this inequality side by side to maintain sustainable exploration of fishery resources. New surveys and new information on stock (preferably based on catch-effort data) are required to adopt proper management strategy with regard to maintain sustainability of fisheries resources especially before increasing effort.

Author(s): Suman Barua, Ehsanul Karim,Nasiruddin Md. Humayun

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