Great seahorses fleeing Coromandel coast due to overfishing
The Hindu
The Hippocampus kelloggi, one of 12 species of fish with a horse-like head found in the Indo-Pacific region, could be migrating toward coastal Odisha due to fishing pressures
GUWAHATI
Extensive fishing off the Coromandel coast could be forcing the great seahorse to migrate laboriously toward Odisha.
Fishing is less intense in the Bay of Bengal off the Odisha coastline. But the shallow coastal ecosystem of the eastern Indian State may not be the new comfort zone for the fish with a horse-like head, a study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Threatened Taxa said.
The study was based on a specimen of a juvenile great seahorse, or Hippocampus kelloggi, caught in a ring net and collected from the Ariyapalli fish landing centre in Odisha’s Ganjam district. The authors of the study are Anil Kumar Behera and Biswajit Mahari of Berhampur University’s Department of Marine Sciences, and Amrit Kumar Mishra of Bombay Natural History Society’s Department of Marine Conservation.
There are 46 species of seahorses reported worldwide. The coastal ecosystems of India house nine out of 12 species found in the Indo-Pacific, one of the hotspots of seahorse populations that are distributed across diverse ecosystems such as seagrass, mangroves, macroalgal beds, and coral reefs.
These nine species are distributed along the coasts of eight States and five Union Territories from Gujarat to Odisha, apart from Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The population of the great seahorse, which is among the eight species tagged ‘vulnerable’, is declining due to its overexploitation for traditional Chinese medicines and as ornamental fish, combined with general destructive fishing and fisheries bycatch, the study said.