Food and feeding habits of the spotted seer, Scomberomorus guttatus (Bloch and Schneider), in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay

Abstract

The spotted seer, essentially a surfaa feeder, feeds on a limited number of about five species, of which the sardinea are the most important and the whitehits the next The ration per active feeding (R) in 1968-69 declined by 50% of the 196748 level.owing to shortage of food. The shift from whitebaits which constitute the exclusive diet of the young, to sardines which form the major food of the adult, takes place at about 315 mm, about 114 the asymptotic length. The fish is far less aggressive than the kingseer or the streaked seer as evident from ih inability to compete ably in times of food shortage, the much larger size at which it shifts to feeding on larger forage species and the orientation of 68.4% of the forage fish in its stomach in its reverse axis. The spotted seer is numerically more abundant, but gravimetrically less abundant than the kingseer, and thenfore, its poor catch by weight must be seen more as a function of its small size than as a function of competence or competitiveness.