Observations on the offshore prawn fishery of Cochin

Although several accounts on the results of exploratory power fishing in the Indian \ncoastal waters have been published (Hornell 1916, Sunder Raj 1931, Chidambaram 1953, \nGopinath 1954, Jayaraman et al. 1959) no detailed account of the biological aspects of th \nspecies of prawns contributing to the fishery is available. Srivatsa (1953) has given a list \nof Crustaceans caught by the Japanese trawlers in Saurashtra waters. Per Sandven (1959) \nremarks "there is reason to believe that in the Arabian Sea outside the Malabar coast are \nfound some of the richest prawn grounds in the world." John and Kurian (1959) observed \nconcentrations of the penaeid prawn Penaeopsis philippii in deeper waters (100 to 150 fathoms) \noff the coast of Kerala. Menon (1955 & 1957), Panikkar & Menon (1955), George (1959 \n& 1961) and Menon & Raman (1961) studied the bionomics of certain species of prawns \nof the backwater and inshore fishery which is supported by the same species contributing \n[O the off shore fishery of the area. Miyamoto et al. (1962) and Satyanarayana et al. \n(1962) reported on the development of trawling for shrimps on the West coast of India along \nwith the influence of various types of trawls, boats and engines of different h. p. on the catches, \nand the prawn trawling gear of Cochin respectively. Apart from these and the reports of \nthe Indo-Norwegian Project on their fishing results published from time to time there has \nnot been any account of the off-shore prawn fishery of this coast.