Marine ornamental fishes of India

Murty, V Sriramachandra (1996) Marine ornamental fishes of India. Proceedings of the Seminar on Fisheries - A Multibillion Dollar Industry, Madras, Aug 17-19, 1995. pp. 23-34.

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Abstract

In the context of increasing popularity of keeping ornamental fishes in home aquaria in several countries, the demand for them has been increasing and substantial trade for these fishes has developed in several parts of the world. It has been estimated that the world trade on ornamental fishes is around US $ 4.5 billion (Srivastava, 1994), of which freshwater ornamental fish trade forms about 85%. India's contribution to the world trade of ornamental fIShes is about Rs. 10 crore (Srivastava, 1994) and almost the entire trade is based on freshwater ornamental fish. There is considerable scope for initiating and developing export of marine ornamental fISh from India (Tomey, 1985, 1986) and to initiate exploitation and export of these fIShes, a training mission for ornamental fish export to Netherlands was also organised (Anon. 1986). The National Seminar on "Planning Export Strategy of Indian Marine Fishes" recommended the development of export of ornamental fish (Anon. 1988). The marine ornamental fishes are inhabitants of coral and rocky areas and also among marine plants. They are abundant in the Gulf of Mannar, Palk Bay and Gulf of Kutch along the mainland coast and in the Lakshadweep and Andaman islands. Among all these regions, the lagoons and reef flats in the Lakshadweep group of islands are the richest both in regard to number of species and their numerical abundance (Murty et al. 1989; Vijayanand and Varghese, 1990).

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