The black clam, Villorita cyprinoides, fishery in the State of Kerala, India

Suja, N and Mohamed, K S (2010) The black clam, Villorita cyprinoides, fishery in the State of Kerala, India. Marine Fisheries Review, 72 (3). pp. 48-61.

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Abstract

The State of Kerala leads India in the production of clams with estimated annual landings of about 66,000 tons (t) in 2008-09. The black clam, Villorita cyprinoides (Family, Corbiculidae) contributes 45,000 t, or about two-thirds of this total (Narasimham et al., 1993; CMFRI Annual Report, 2009). Most of the annual production of black clams, about 25,000 t, comes from Vembanad Lake where almost 4,000 fishermen harvest them. The other clams harvested in the lake are the grey clam, Meretrix casta, and to a much lesser extent, the yellow clam, Paphia malabarica, and another, the Sunetta scripta. Vembanad Lake also has large sub-fossil deposits of black clam shells that are mined for commercial use (Kripa et al., 2004). The lake also has commercially-important finfish. The fisheries for the clams and the finfish provide the major livelihood for coastal communities around the lake (Sathiadhas et al., 2004). This paper provides an overview of the black clam fishery in Kerala including descriptions of the habitats, biology and ecology, demography of the fishing families, and the harvesting, processing, and marketing of the live clams and also the shell deposits. The information provided in earlier papers on these subjects by Laxmilatha and Appukuttan (2002), Sathiadhas et al. (2004), Arun (2005), Ravindran et al. (2006), and others are summarized. We conducted a survey to collect more detailed descriptions of these subjects and supplement them with photographs.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	black clam
Subjects:	Molluscan Fisheries > Clam
Divisions:	CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division Subject Area > CMFRI > CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division Subject Area > CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division
Depositing User:	Users 5 not found.
Date Deposited:	26 Feb 2011 08:18
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2015 15:46
URI:	http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/id/eprint/7844

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