fish production Common terms pertaining to fish production
Terminology
Active fish: - Fish that is feeding actively and striking aggressively.
Angleworm: - Any live earthworm placed on a fishing hook.
Angling: - Refers to recreational catching of fish by hook and line.
Aquaculture: - The farming of aquatic organisms including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants. Farming implies some sort of intervention in the rearing process to enhance production, such as regular stocking, feeding, protection from predators, etc
Bag limit: - Also known as daily bag limit. The number or size of a species that a person can legally take in a day or trip.
Brackish water: - Water of intermediate salinity between seawater & freshwater.
Brood fish: - A large sexually mature fish capable of breeding.
By-mortality: - It is the mortality of marine organisms from injuries caused by encounters with the fishing gear during the fishing process.
Carp: - Member of minnow family.
Demersal: - living at or near the bottom of a body of water.
Eutrophication: - Generally, the natural or man-induced process by which a body of water
becomes enriched in dissolved mineral nutrients (particularly phosphorus and nitrogen) that stimulate the growth of aquatic plants and enhance organic production of the water body. Excessive enrichment may result in the depletion of dissolved oxygen and eventually to species mortality and replacements.
Fecundity: - In general, the potential reproductive capacity of an organism or population
expressed in the number of eggs (or offspring) produced during each reproductive cycle. Fecundity usually increases with age and size. The information is used to compute stock or population spawning potential.
Fingerling: - A young fish about a finger long, usually 2 inches in length.
Fish: - is a cold-blooded aquatic organism that breathes with gills and swims with fins, they are categorized as Finfish and Shellfish.
Fish stock: - The living resources in the community or population from which catches are taken in a fishery. Use of the term fish stock usually implies that the particular population is more or less isolated reproductively from other stocks of the same species and hence self-sustaining. In a particular fishery, the fish stock may be one or several species of fish but here is also intended to include commercial invertebrates and plants.
Fishery: - The term fishery can refer to the sum of all fishing activities on a given resource.
2 Common terms pertaining to fish production
Fishing: -this term is used interchangeably with “collecting” and “harvesting” to describe the act of removing sea cucumbers from the wild for commercial or subsistence purposes.
Fishing mortality: - A technical term which refers to the production of the fish available being removed by fishing in a small unit of time. E.g., a fishing mortality rate of 0.2 implies that approximately 20% of the average population will be removed in a year due to fishing.
Fry: - Immature fish from the time they hatch to the time they become fingerlings.
Ichthyology: - It is the branch of science dealing with the study of fishes, commercial aspects of fishes, including the behaviour of environment, population dynamics etc.
Marine protected area: - a portion of the marine benthos and water, with its associated biota, reserved to protect part or all of the designated environment. The protection may allow for regulated levels of extraction (fishing) of plants and animals.
Overfishing: - A generic term used to refer to the state of a stock subject to a level of fishing effort or fishing mortality such that a reduction of effort would, in the medium term, lead to an increase in the total catch. Often referred to as overexploitation and equated too biological overfishing, it results from a combination of growth overfishing and recruitment overfishing and occurs often together with ecosystem overfishing and economic overfishing.
Pelagic fish: - Fish that spend most of their life swimming in the water column with little contact with or dependency on the bottom. Usually refers to the adult stage of a species.
Phytoplankton: - Derived from the Greek words Phyto (plant) and plankton (made to wander or drift), phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments, both salty and fresh.
Pisciculture: The cultivation of fishes in controlled aquatic environment.
Snagging: - A method of catching fish by jerking an un-baited hook through water.
Spawning stock: - Mature part of a stock responsible for the reproduction. The portion of an overall stock having reached sexual maturity and able to spawn. Often conventionally defined as the number or biomass of all individuals beyond age at first maturity or size at first maturity, that is beyond the age or size class in which 50% of the individuals are mature.
Stocking. The practice of releasing artificially reared young fish into a pond, lake or river. These are subsequently caught, preferably at a larger size.
Turbidity: - Turbidity is the measure of relative clarity of a liquid, number of suspended particles and dissolved dirt in the water which give the water a brown color. Secchi disc is used to measure turbidity of water.
Weed guard: - A protective device on fishing hook to prevent picking up weed.
Zooplankton: - Microscopic animals that drift freely in the water column.
3 Common terms pertaining to fish production
Important fish in India: -
Name of Fish Botanical name Family
Catla Catla catla Cyprinidae
Labeo Labeo rohita Cyprinidae
Labeo calbasu
Labeo fimbriatus
Labeo bata
Labeo gonius
Cirrhinus Cirrhinus mrigala Cyprinidae
Cirrhinus reba
Cirrhinus cirrhosa
Tillapia Oreochromis mossambicus Cichlidae
Pangasius Pangasius pangasius Pangasiidae
Vannamei Litopenaeus vannamei Penaeidae
(White leg shrimp)
Magur Clarias batrachus Clariidae
Terminology of fish migration: -
The following terms and definitions of fish migrations proposed by Meyer (1949) have been generally adopted:
(a) Diadromous: - Truly migratory fishes which migrate between the sea and freshwater.
(b) Anadromous: - Diadromous fishes which spend most of their lives in the sea and migrate to freshwater to breed (salmon, sea trout, shad, sea lampreys, sturgeons).
(c) Catadromous: - Diadromous fishes which spend most of their lives in freshwater and migrate to the sea to breed (eel, Salangidae, Galaxidae, Retropinnidae).
(d) Amphidromous: -Diadromous fishes which migrate from the sea to freshwater or vice versa, but not for the purpose of breeding (some Exocidae, Perca fluviatilis, some Mugilidae).
4 Common terms pertaining to fish production
(e) Potamodromous: - Truly migratory fishes, the migrations of which occur wholly within freshwater (trout, bream, Coregonoids).
(f) Oceanodromous: - Truly migratory fishes which live and migrate wholly in the sea (cod, herring, capelin, tuna, mackerel).
Classification of Lives in Breed in Example
fish
Diadromous Migrate between sea to freshwater, lives -
partly in sea water and partly in freshwater.
Amphidromous Migrate from sea to freshwater or vice-versa Exocidae,
Mugilidae
Potamodromous Live and migrate within fresh water Trout, bream
Oceanodromous Live and migrate within sea water Cod, tuna,
Mackerel
Anadromous Sea water Freshwater Salmon, sea
trout, sea lampreys
Catadromous Freshwater Sea water Eel, Salangidae
Sources: - FAO, Fishery manager’s guidebook by K. L. Cochrane & S. Garcia
