Fishery and biology of the carangid fish Megalaspis cordyla (Linnaeus) off Cochin

The paper embodies the fishery and biology of the Horse mackerel Megalaspis cordyla off Cochin. \nWest coast of India contributes to the bulk of the catches in All India landings. The species is caught \nmainly in trawls, drift gill neb and purse seine from the area and landed at Cochin Fisheries Harbour \ncontributing upto 13.76% of the carangid landings of the centre. The catch of M. cordyla at Cochin forms \nupto 11.26% that of Kerala. Seasonally, at Cochin Fisheries Harbour, M. cordyla is caught during \npre-monsoon (January - May), and post-monsoon period (Octo,ber - November) in trawls, during monsoon \nand pt-monsoon (May-December) in drift gill nets and only during September-October months in purse \nseine. \nM. cordyla exhibits a food preference for fishes especially Stolephorus spp. The species has a \nprolonged breeding yason extending from April to February with a peak during May to August, as has \nalso been evidenced by Gonadcsomatic index. Size at maturity of M. cordyla in both the sexes is 251- \n270 mm. Chi-square test of sex ratio showed an overall dominance of females in the population. Fecundity \nof the species ranged between 91854 to 324292. There was no significant difference in the length weight \nregression coefficient in the two sizes. Therefore a pooled fit for both the sexes together was drawn as \nLog W = -4.311030 + 2.687944 Log L.