Abstract
Spawning biology and spawn fishery of three valuable species of Indian major carps,Catla catla, Labeo rohita andCirrhinus mrigala, in the lower Halda River, Bangladesh, were studied in 1978. The major carps spawned only in the Sonairchar oxbow-bend from April to June on or near the dates of the full moon and the new moon. The tide was then at its highest level, and there was heavy flood water runoff from the hill region with sharp increases in water level, turbidity and current velocity, as well as decreases in water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and hydrogen ion concentration. These three heterogeneric species, as a result of parallelism or convergence in evolution, overlap in their environmental requirements for spawning. The nursery ground of the major carp fry spawned in the Halda River was found to be in the Bay of Bengal. The brood stock origin is suspected to be at the Shankha River, 40 miles south of the Karnafuli River. The spawn fishery in the Halda River was intensive but inefficient. Engineering works and water management schemes are threatening the spawning habitat.
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Contribution No. 1132, Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, University of Maryland, Solomons, Maryland, U.S.A. This study was supported by funds provided by the Bangladesh Directorate of Fisheries and the International Development Association (The World Bank).
Author served as Senior Biologist with the Snell Environmental Group, Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A. during the course of the study.
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Tsai, Cf., Nazrul Islam, M., Karim, R. et al. Spawning of major carps in the lower Halda River, Bangladesh. Estuaries 4, 127–138 (1981). https://doi.org/10.2307/1351675
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1351675