Relative abundance of trawl fishes in theBombay-Saurashtra waters

With the help of skilled Japanese technicians very intensive commercial fishing by two pairs of bull trawlers, ' Arnalla'—' Paj' and ' Satpati'—' Pilotan ' (each of 29 meters length, 250 BHP and about 91 gross tonnage) of the New India Fisheries Company, Bombay, was carried out from April 1956 to October 1963 in Bombay- Saurashtra waters, landing a total catch of 26,304 metric tons offish sold at a whole sale price of about Rs. 1.6 crores (Anon, 1965). The annual effort varied from 2,850.97 hours to 5,453.27 hours and the catch rates from 601.60 to 899.70 kg. per hour of trawling for a pair of vessels. Fishing by these vessels was preceded by exploratory buU-trawling by the Government of India cutters, M. T. Ashok and M. T. Pratap of the Deep Sea Fishing Station, Bombay during 1953-'55. These cutters, prior to 1953 using otter trawl had annual catch rates varying from 94.4 to 195.4 lbs. per hour of fishing, but during 1953-'55 when they had taken to the Japanese method of paired trawling (bull-trawling) the average catch per vessel had gone upto 1,562.4 lbs. per hour of trawling (Jayaraman et al., 1959). The present report shows that the best of trawling grounds in Bombay-Saurashtra waters are in Kutch region, the fishery potential of which was hitherto unexplored.