A preliminary study of the juvenile fishes of the coastal waters off Madras city

Abstract

It has generally been observed that in the commercial catches along the Madras coast very young stages of fish occur in enormous numbers during certain months. The present paper deals with the periodicity in the postlarval and juvenile bony fishes obtained from March 1954 to July 1955 collected from the fishing centres at Triphcane North and South, Ayodhyakuppam, Nochikuppam, Santhome, Kanniappanagar and Royapuram. The majority of the species being of great commercial importance, it is hoped that a record of their very young stages, apparently not older than a few months, as judged by their very small size of about few cm. in length, will help in fixing the approximate period of their breeding and in facilitating interpretation of the different size classes, usually obtained in the commercial catches. Further, it is well known that information on the fluctuations in the abundance of post-larvae of any commercial fish is of value in determining the magnitude of the forthcoming fisheries.