Published Paper Details:

Sea food is a highly traded food commodity among which, farmed tropical marine penaeid shrimps contribute a significant proportion. The present study has been undertaken to investigate the seasonal occurrence and abundance of juvenile penaeids in Gosthani estuary, Bheemunipatnam coast; in order to know the opportunities to get wild stock for aqua farmers. For the study, random samples of juvenile shrimps from the fishery of the estuary, were collected fortnightly between September 2020 to August 2021 and analysed. The results revealed the presence of six species of juvenile penaeid shrimps inhabiting the estuary during the study period. Metapenaeus monoceros and Penaeus indicus were more commonly found in catches and constituted 78.78% of the population. These two species sustained their occurrence throughout the study period, whereas P. semisulcatus constituted 15.83% of the population followed by P. monodon (4.21%). Another juvenile species, M. dobsoni shared a very little percentage of the population (0.8%), whereas small individuals (6mm-14mm) of the genera Metapenaeus constituting 0.38% of the total population, could not be identified to species level. Seasonal abundance of the population is also observed, which can be utilized as irrelevance seed resource for penaeid shrimp aquaculture.