Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences Research Article Fish Diversity of Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Southeast Coast of India DARWIN CHATLA, P. PADMAVATHI* Department of Zoology and Aquaculture, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Nagarjuna Nagar – 522 510, Andhra Pradesh, India. Abstract | Diversity of marine fishes was studied along the coast of Bay of Bengal from four selected landing stations of Andhra Pradesh, Southeast coast of India during the period from December 2016 to November 2018. A total of 171 species belonging to 14 orders, 63 families and 128 genera have been recorded during the study period. It is evident that marine fish production is well below the production targets. The less availability of some species indicates a remarkable decline in the diversity of fishes. The anthropogenic disturbances and climatic changes are reported to be the factors affecting the fish population and diversity. Therefore, we are in the stage of need of the hour to conserve marine biodiversity in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The current study also recorded the IUCN status of 171 fish species in various categories of conservation status. Keywords | Bio-diversity, Conservation, IUCN status, Marine fisheries, Andhra Pradesh Received | March 10, 2021; Accepted | April 26, 2021; Published | July 28, 2021 *Correspondence | P. Padmavathi, Department of Zoology and Aquaculture, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Nagarjuna Nagar – 522 510, Andhra Pradesh, India; Email: [email protected] Citation | Chatla D, Padmavathi P (2021). Fish diversity of coastal Andhra Pradesh, southeast coast of India. Adv. Anim. Vet. Sci. 9(9): 1424-1436. DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.aavs/2021/9.9.1424.1436 ISSN (Online) | 2307-8316; ISSN (Print) | 2309-3331 Copyright © 2021 Chatla and Padmavathi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. INTRODUCTION Andhra Pradesh has known for its healthy fishing grounds and diverse resources comprising different gears and crafts ndia is one of the largest mega-diversity countries and with a total number of 27211 fishing vessels, including known for its biodiversity richness abundance reflected 1675 mechanized, 11807 motorized and 13729 traditional Iin the diversity of fresh and marine water fishes. It is well- fishing crafts, and gears such as seines, cast nets, drag nets, known that the marine faunal diversity depends mostly on gill nets, trawl nets, and hook and lines (Rao et al., 2008; fish diversity (Kar et al., 2017). It was estimated that In- WAPCOS, 2017). The marine fish landings accounted for dia housed 3231 valid species, of which 2443 are marine about 0.259 million tonnes (mt) in 2019 (FRAD, 2020). (75.6%) (Gopi and Mishra, 2015). Globally, India occupies However, fish landings have fluctuated over the years from the second-largest fish producer with 3.56 million tonnes 2013 to 2019 (Figure 1). for the year 2019 (FRAD, 2019) and exports worth US $7.08 billion (DADF, 2019). The fisheries play a remark- Every region of the sea is a home for wide variety of life able role in the agro-economy of India with regard to pro- and repository of biodiversity. Among marine biodiversi- tein supply and employment (Chatla et al., 2020). ty, fish diversity is comparatively higher than other fau- nal diversity with ample existing data and higher proba- The state of Andhra Pradesh endowed with a vast coast- bility for the discovery of new species (Pyle et al., 2019). line of 974 km spread across nine coastal districts is situ- The dispersion patterns of several species and extinction ated between 150 54’ 46.44” N latitude and 790 44’ 23.95” of indigenous fishes have been directly linked to human E longitude. It is scattered with 353 fish landing stations interference (Nelson et al., 2016). Of late, over exploita- including 4 major harbors viz., Visakhapatnam, Kakina- tion of fish species has become a matter of great concern da, Machilipatanam, and Nizampatnam (CMFRI, 2012). (Ranjan, 2018). The distribution of fishery resources in the NE US Academic Publishers September 2021 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | Page 1424 Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences coastal waters varies with distance from the shore (Vard- juna University, Andhra Pradesh, India. harajan and Soundarapandian, 2015). The catchment rates vary with the landing stations and the species (Kar et al., 2017), and hence the catchment information is essential for the development of effective management and to de- velop the measures to be taken to conserve the fishes to- wards sustainable utilization (Darwin and Padmavathi, 2020). In view of the given significance of diversity, the fishery composition of landings and seasonal abundance of different resources along the Visakhapatnam coast were studied by Sudarsan (1981), Krishnan and Mishra (1993), Sujatha (1995), Barman et al. (2004) and Sreedhar et al. (2009). However, there is no documented evidence on the diversity of fishes in other fish landing stations of coast- al Andhra Pradesh. Therefore, the current study has been undertaken to know the marine fish diversity of unex- plored four fish landing stations of coastal Andhra Pradesh. Figure 2: Geographical location of the four fish landing stations. Table 1: Geographical location of the four sampling sites Figure 1: Annual Marine Fish Landings in Andhra Pradesh and of coastal Andhra Pradesh. India (Source CMFRI). Fish landing stations Geographical location of fish landing stations MATERIALS AND METHODS Latitude (North) Longitude (East) Machilipatnam (A) 160 14’ 49” 810 18’ 63” TUDY REA S A Nizampatnam (B) 150 52’ 58” 800 38’ 18” The present study is based on the samples collected in four 0 0 designated landing stations of coastal Andhra Pradesh Vodarevu (C) 15 79’ 34” 80 41’ 10” 0 0 viz., Machilipatnam (A), Nizampatnam (B), Vodarevu (C), Pakala (D) 15 27’ 31” 80 08’ 53” and Pakala (D) (Figure 2) located in Krishna, Guntur, and Prakasam districts along 224 km coastline (Table 1 and 2). FISH DIVERSITY AND ABUNDANCE Fishes were identified up to the species level by following SAMPLE COLLECTION the standard books (Talwar and Kacker, 1984; Barman et To study the marine fish diversity, fish samples were col- al., 2004) and web-based keys, FishBase (www.fishbase.in) lected from the catches of fish landing centres where fishes (Froese and Pauly, 2020), and Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fish- were caught by using different gears such as cast nets, tram- es (www.calacademy.org) (Fricke et al., 2020). The classi- mel net, hook and line, shore seine, boat seine and purse fication adopted was mainly followed by Nelson (2006). seine. Sampling was done at regular fortnight or monthly The current valid names, common names and concise data intervals in all four landing stations from December 2016 on the conservation status of fish species and importance to November 2018 except fish ban period of the months of to fisheries was gathered based on the FishBase (Froese April and May. The fish samples from various catches were and Pauly, 2020), International Union for Conservation of collected as soon as the catches were offloaded. Some of Nature (www.iucn.org) (IUCN, 2019) and World Regis- the samples were preserved in 5% formalin and transported ter of Marine Species (www.marinespecies.org) (WoRMS, to the laboratory for taxonomic identification. All the col- 2020). The percentage composition of orders, families, gen- lections after identification were documented at Museum, era and species of collected fishes was recorded. Department of Zoology and Aquaculture, Acharya Nagar- NE US Academic Publishers September 2021 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | Page 1425 Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences Table 2: fish species, Common names, Threat to humans, IUCN status and occurrence stations in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Class: Chondrichthyes/Elasmobranchii S . Order Family Species Name Common Station IUCN Threat Hu- No. Name Status to Hu- man mans Use 1 Carcharhiniformes Carcharhinidae Carcharhinus dussumie- White cheek A, B EN H C ri (Müller & Henle, 1839) shark 2 C. limbatus (Müller & Henle, 1839) Blacktip shark A, B, C VU Tr C, Gf 3 C. sorrah (Müller & Henle, 1839) Spot-tail shark A, B, C NT H C 4 Lamiopsis temminck- Broadfin Shark A, B EN H C ii (Müller & Henle, 1839) 5 Rhizoprionodon acutus (Rüppell, 1837) Milk shark A, B, C LC H C 6 Scoliodon laticaudus Müller Spadeno- A, B NT H C & Henle, 1838 se shark 7 Sphyrnidae Sphyrna zygaena (Linnaeus, 1758) Hammer A, B, VU Tr C, Gf head shark C, D 8 Myliobatiformes Aetobatidae Aetobatus flagellum (Bloch Longheaded A, B EN H C & Schneider, 1801) eagle ray 9 Dasyatidae Himantura fava (Annandale, 1909) Honeycomb A, B NE H Ss whipray 10 H. uarnak (Gmelin, 1789) Honeycomb A, B VU Tr C, Gf stingray 11 Maculabatis gerrardi (Gray, 1851) Sharp nose A, B, VU H C, Gf stingray C, D 12 Telatrygon zugei (Müller Pale-edged A, B NT H C & Henle, 1841) stingray 13 Orectolobiformes Hemiscylliidae Chiloscyllium griseum Grey bam- A, B, NT H C Müller & Henle, 1838 booshark C, D 14 Rhinopristiformes Rhinidae Rhynchobatus djidden- Giant guitarfish A, B VU H C, Gf sis (Forsskål, 1775) 15 Rhinobatidae Rhinobatos annandalei Norman, 1926 Annandale's B DD H F guitarfish 16 Torpediniformes Narcinidae Narcine brunnea Annandale, 1909 Brown elec- A, B NE H Ss tric ray 17 Narkidae Narke dipterygia (Bloch Numbray A, B DD H C & Schneider, 1801) Class: Osteichthyes/Actinopterygii 18 Anguilliformes Muraenidae Strophidon sathete (Hamilton,