Seasonal growth of Arabian scad Trachurus indicus from the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea, Egypt.

Mehanna, Sahar; Soliman, Belal; Sayed, Mohamed; Abdel Aliem, Rana

doi:10.21608/ejabf.2018.7715

Seasonal growth of Arabian scad Trachurus indicus from the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea, Egypt.

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ 1- Fisheries Division, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Egypt

² Faculty of Science, Suez University, Suez, Egypt

³ Fisheries Division, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Egypt

10.21608/ejabf.2018.7715

Abstract

Horse mackerel and scads, family Carangidae, are the most abundant pelagic fishes inhabiting the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea where they constituted about 77% of the total purse-seine catch in the Gulf. Growth of fish is a process that influenced by the environmental conditions especially temperature. Age and seasonal growth of Trachurus indicus were studied from samples collected randomly during the fishing season 2015/2016 from the Attaka port the main landing site in the Gulf of Suez. Otoliths of 1120 specimens were used for age determination and the maximum attained age for this species was three years. The seasonal length-weight relationship was investigated and the growth type was found to be greatly affected by environmental parameters in different seasons. The seasonal von Bertalanffy growth model was applied to estimate the seasonal growth parameters L∞, K and t_o. It is clear that temperature is a major factor affecting the Arabian scad growth.

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