Observations on the deep-sea prawn fishery off the South-West Coast of India with special reference to Pandalids

Abstract

The recent exploratory trawling operations conducted by some of the larger vessels of the Indo-Norwegian Project have indicated immense potentialities of deep-sea prawns along the upper continental slope off the South-West Coast. Although more than a dozen species of prawns often occur in the deep-sea catches, only five of them representing the family Pandalidae namely Heterocarpus woodmasoni, H. gibbosus, Parapandalus spinipes, Plesionika martia and P. ensis constitute the bulk of the catches from 225-400 m depth. The present paper deals with the abundance of these five species in different regions and at different depths between Trivandrum and Cannanore based on the catches of 559 hauls taken during October 1967 to December 1969. Some biological aspects such as size distribution, sex ratio, breeding periods, fecundity and food of the individual species are also reported.