Fish Diversity of Kuttanad’s River System, Kerala State, India

Abstract

India is known for its inland fishery resources and once with rich indigenous fishery resources with great biodiversity. The poor inland fishers and rural community depended for their livelihood and food security on these indigenous species. The present investigation has been conducted to identify the fishes of the Kuttanad River from January to May 2014 at weekly intervals. A total of 62 freshwater species from 17 families were found during our survey. The fishes were divided into three groups’ viz., cultivable fishes, food fishes and ornamental fishes. Among cultivable fishes order Cypriniformes were dominated by 6 species, followed by Perciformes (3 species) and Siluriformes (2 species). The order Anguilliformes and Beloniformes were represented by 1 species each. A total of 11 species were identified as cultivable fishes. The number of food fishes identified were 22 species under investigation. The dominant group belongs to the family Siluridae (7 species) followed by Cyprinidae (6 species). 5 species were identified under the order Perciformes. Synbranchiformes and Beloniformes by 3 and 1 species respectively. Maximum fish species identified were ornamental fishes (28 species). The order Cypriniformes alone represented 22 species. The identified fishes of the order Beloniformes were 3, Siluriformes by 2 and Tetraodontiformes by 1 species. The results of the present study clearly showed that the fish fauna of the River is highly diverse and proper management is essential for the conservation of the fish biodiversity.