KOCHI: The Arabian Sea is one of the most biologically productive oceans because it is situated on a tropical belt, land-locked in the north and dominated by seasonally reversing monsoon winds.
Being a region that houses a permanent minimum-oxygen-zone, the Arabian Sea has a large mass of zooplanktons and phytoplanktons.
Added to that was the revelation by the US-GLOBEC’s acoustic study that indicated the availability close to 100 million tonnes of myctophids (lantern fish) in the central and western Arabian Sea.
The Centre for Marine Living Resources and Ecology (CMLRE), Kochi , which comes under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, has initiated a project to do ‘environmental studies for the assessment of myctophid resources in the Arabian Sea.’ Though myctophid is not preferred as an edible item due to the high lipid content in the meat, it has potential as a fishery resource for extraction of crude oil and preparation of animal and aquaculture feed.
“We did a study under the 9th Five Year Plan during which we gained substantial understanding about the vertical distribution of deep-living meso-zooplanktons and their spatial variability in the Arabian Sea. We also did some work on the deep scattering layer (DSL) properties of myctophid,” said V N Sanjeevan, director, CMLRE. The knowledge of DSL is beneficial for defence purposes, he added.
“It has a life-span of less than a year. This essentially means that a huge biomass of myctophids is generated and sustained on an annual basis,” he said.
The focus of the project will be to estimate the stock potential, develop appropriate harvest, post-harvest and marketing strategies, and understand the dynamics of the system that sustain a huge biomass of myctophids.
“We want to check the possibility of making biofuel as well as fish feed from the biomass as the fish has a high lipid content,” Sanjeevan says. Other institutions involved in the project are the National institute of Oceanography, CMFRI and CIFT.
CMLRE has been organising, coordinating and promoting ocean development activities in the country which include mapping the living resources, preparing an inventory of commercially exploitable l iving marine resources, an planning their optimum utilisation through ecosystem management and R&D in basic sciences on marine living resources and ecology.
sudha@epmltd.com