Food of some deep sea fishes collected from the eastern Arabian Sea

Abstract

For determining the food of some deep sea fish in the eastern Arabian Sea, samples were collected with a High Speed Demersal Trawl (HSDT) from surveys on board FORV Sagar Sampada from 1998 to 2000. The sampling depth varied from 50 to 500 m and most of the fishes were collected from depths greater than 100 m. The eastern Arabian Sea has a good representation of deep sea fishes and the most dominant families were Chlorophthalmidae, Synodontidae, emipteridae, Carangidae, Gempylidae and Centrolophidae. Fish stomachs from 38 species were examined and pelagic shrimps, myctophids and Bregmaceros were the dominant food items. Among zooplankton, ostracods and copepods dominated.