Minimum Legal Size proposed for commercially exploited marine finfish and shellfish resources of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Marine fisheries in Tamil Nadu have undergone tremendous change in terms of fishing pattern, fishing method, extension of fishing grounds, composition of fish catch and consequent increase in the total fish catch in recent years. The recent demand from industries involved in fish meal and fish oil encourages targeted fishing for by-catch resulting in heavy landing of low value by-catch in certain places along Tamil Nadu coast. These by-catch are often dominated by juveniles of many commercially important marine finfishes and shell fishes. So it warrants some caution and intervention. One of the methods to discourage the indiscriminate exploitation of juveniles is to impose a Minimum Legal Size (MLS) which is the size at which a particular species can be legally retained if caught. The advantage of a MLS is that it aids in the control of two major problems in the fisheries management, growth overfishing and recruitment overfishing either by increasing the minimum size of harvest or by increasing or maintaining the size of the spawning stock. The most common method of increasing the reproductive output through the use of size limits is to set the minimum size at which the females become sexually mature. As the individuals of a species do not attain sexual maturity at the same size, it can be a size at which higher proportions are mature.