On the breeding of penaeids and the recruitment of their postlarvae into the backwaters of Cochin

Abstract

As far as known most of the penaeid prawns spawn in the deeper waters of the sea and use the adjacent shallow areas, usually the backwaters, as their nursery grounds. The only exception to this are the observations of Dakin (1946) and Muriel and Bennet (1952) when one of the species was observed to breed in the coastal lakes of New South Wales. The Cochin backwaters are found to be the nursery grounds of three of the commercially important species of penaeids of the area. All these species are noticed to enter the backwaters at very early postlarval stages and the occurrence of these postlarvae in large numbers in these backwaters has been recorded and the data made use of for determining the breeding season of two of them, viz., Metapenaeus dobsoni by Menon (1955) and Metapenaeus monoceros (George, 1959).