Abstract:
The current trawling practices result in high exploitation of juveniles
of all commercial and non-commercial species, in all maritime states of
India (Najmudeen and Sathiadas, 2008). For example, the percentage
of juveniles exploited by trawl can be as high as 20 to 60% in the case
of seerlishes and groupers and as much as 12% in the case of squids
(Mohamed et aL, 2009a). In other words, there is substantial amount
of growth overfishing taking place for all commercial stocks in the trawl
fisheries of India. Growth overfishing occurs when too many small fish
are harvested, usually because of excessive effort and poor selectivity
of the gear (e.g. too small mesh sizes) and the fish are not given the
time to grow to the size at which the maximum yield-per-recruit would
be obtained from the stock. A reduction of fishing mortality on juveniles
or their outright protection, would lead to an increase in yield as well as
profits from the fishery.
