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Impact of bottom trawling on the epifauna off Veraval coast, India

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Title Impact of bottom trawling on the epifauna off Veraval coast, India
 
Creator Bhagirathan, Usha
Meenakumari, B.
Panda, Satyen Kumar
Madhu, V. R
Vaghela, D. T.
Jethva, J. K.
 
Subject Epifauna
Bottom trawling
Veraval
India
 
Description 297-312
Experimental
bottom trawling was conducted from MFV Sagarkripa at five transects of
water depths 15-20 m, 21-25 m, 26-30 m, 31-35 m and 36-40 m in commercial
trawling grounds to assess the impact of bottom trawling on the epifauna off
Veraval coast. Trawling was conducted for 17 months in a span of 20 months
(September 2005-April 2007) excluding the trawl ban period (June to August). Altogether
41 species of gastropods, 1 species of scaphopod, 19 species of bivalves,
3 species of crab, 3 species of shrimps, 2 species of Balanus,
1 species of stomatopod, 4 species of

finfishes,
2 species of brown algae and 4 species of octocorals were identified.
The soft corals found were Litophyton sp. and Studeriotes sp.
(Christmas tree soft coral). The gorgonians collected were young stages of Subergorgia
suberosa and Juncella juncea (Whip coral). The presence of
octocorals recorded in the month of October, immediately after the closed
season (June to August) when the sea bottom is not heavily trawled suggests
that this area is an abode of corals and a favourable site for coral reef
formation. But intense trawling in the succeeding months destroys these
valuable entities of ecosystem and the samples were not encountered in the
subsequent months. The changes before and after trawling in biodiversity
indices were significant at 15-20 m. The abundance-biomass curve showed that
the rate of stress increased with water depth. The shallow depths are lightly
trawled due to intermittent rocky nature of bottom and as water depth
increases, the trawling intensity increases. The analysis of similarity of
percentages in Simper showed that the dissimilarity of fauna before and after
experimental trawling was more evident in lightly trawled area and remained masked
in heavily trawled area. Suggestions are made for the promotion of eco-friendly
gears and for conducting studies on appropriate un-trawled control sites for
comparative assessment. Management strategies have to be adopted for the
conservation and biodiversity protection of octocorals.
 
Date 2014-03-03T06:49:40Z
2014-03-03T06:49:40Z
2014-02
 
Type Article
 
Identifier 0975-1033 (Online); 0379-5136 (Print)
http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/27271
 
Language en_US
 
Rights CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India
 
Publisher NISCAIR-CSIR, India
 
Source IJMS Vol.43(2) [February 2014]