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Billfish: an important part of the pelagic gillnet fisheries of Pakistan

Year of publication 2013

Product type Meeting

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Billfish is a group of marine fishes belonging to families Istiophoridae and Xiphidae mainly found in the offshore waters. These large sized fishes support substantially large and important commercial and recreatiol fisheries in many parts of the world. In Pakistan, there is no aimed fishery for billfishes and these are landed as components of the catch of pelagic gillnet fisheries. There are other gillnet fisheries in Pakistan which are mainly based in coastal areas. Some of these are species s pecific like monofilament gillnet fishery for Indian mackerel and bottom set gillnet fisheries for stingrays etc. Historically billfishes used to be exported to Sri Lanka in salted-dried form fetching higher prices than all other salted products. However, from the last decade, almost entire catches of billfish are traded in chilled form with Iran. Billfishes are not well studied in Pakistan.With the exception of Osmanyet al. (2009) and Rashid (1966) no work on the billfish was dedicatedly carrie d out. Rashid (1966) described species of family Istiophoridae from Pakistan whereas Osmanyet al. (2009) described abundance and distribution of billfishes from Pakistan. In addition, Moazzam and Usmani (2004) has published a map showing distribution of billfishes in the Arabian Sea along the coast of Pakistan. Present paper describes details of the billfish fisheries of Pakistan including fishing methods (boats and gears), fishing operations, species composition, commercial landings, dispositio n and marketing. The landing data presented in this paper obtained from Anonymous (2013) and pertains to two maritime provinces of Pakistan i.e. Sindh and Balochistan as well as some information from Exclusive Economic Zone of Pakistan.

Statutory body / Meeting title Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC)

Meeting symbol IOTC-2013-WPB11-11

Meeting Session Number 11

Language English

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    An update on shark bycatch of tuna gillnet fisheries of Pakistan 2013
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    The working paper presents an update on the shark by-catch of tu gillnet fisheries of Pakistan. This includes the landing data of sharks collected by observers from the period of June 2012 – May 2013. The most common shark species in the gillnet operations identified through the landing data are Short-fin mako ((Isurus oxyrinchus), Big-eye thresher (Alopias superciliosus) and Silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis). All of the 3 species are of intertiol concern whereas short-fin mako is expected to be species of interest for intertiol scale – stock assessments in the foreseeable future. Nomil catches of elasmobranchs were reported from 1999 – 2007 indicating a decline in the apex predators (Shahid and Khan, 2012). The data presented herein, summarizes the by catch of elasmobranch from tu gillnet operations data.
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