Fecundity of the oceanic skipjack Katsuwonus pelamis (Linnaeus) of Minicoy

Abstract

One of the requisites in fishery biology is that of securing reliable estimates of population sizes. This can be estimated if the total annual egg production by all the females in the population, the laverage annual number of eggs produced by each female in the population and sex ratio of the population are known. A knowledge of the fecundity which can be defined as the average number ,of eggs produced per year by each female is a necessity in such studies. Recent contributions on !the fecundity of fishes are by June (1953), Lehman (1953), Mac Gregor (1957), Otsu and Uchida (1959), Pillay (1958), Sarojini (1957), Simpson (1951), and Yuen (1955). The purpose of the present 'paper is to record extensive data on the fecundity of the oceanic skipjack, K. pelamis and to study its variation in relation to the size of the fish.