Myctophids in the Arabian Sea and its Systematics

Sebastian, Manju (2022) Myctophids in the Arabian Sea and its Systematics. In: ICAR-CMFRI -Winter School on Recent Development in Taxonomic Techniques of Marine Fishes for Conservation and Sustainable Fisheries Management. ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, pp. 375-389.

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Abstract

The northern Arabian Sea is the habitat of large mid-water fish stocks (Gjøsæter, 1984). These stocks reside all along the outer edges of the coastal zone of the Arabian Peninsula, off Pakistan, and the Gulf of Oman. Doubtless there are also sizeable stocks off Somalia and northern India. Off the Arabian Peninsula and in the Gulf of Oman these stocks are dominated by myctophids, mostly by Benthosema pterotum, although Benthosema fibulatum, Diaphus arabicus (Kinzer et al.1993), Myctophum spinosum, and Symbolophorus evermanni are occasional large contributors. Possibly the B. pterotum population is the largest, localized fish stock in the world, amounting to 100 million tons! It has been suggested that this very large stock of the one species derives from the very small stocks of all other fish; for some reason B. pterotum and other myctophids are the competitive dominants (GLOBEC, 1993).

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