STRUCTURE OF THE FISHERY OF THE LOWER EUPHRATES RIVER, QURNA, IRAQ

S. Al-Noor, S.; R. M. Mohamed, A.; A. K. Faris, R.

	STRUCTURE OF THE FISHERY OF THE LOWER EUPHRATES RIVER, QURNA, IRAQ
IRAQ JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE
Article 1, Volume 14, Issue 8, 2009, Pages 0-0
Authors
S. S. Al-Noor; A. R. M. Mohamed; R. A. K. Faris
Abstract
The fishery of the lower Euphrates River, west Qurna in Basrah Governorate have been analyzed during the period from January to December 2005. The fishing boats used there varied in lengths form 8 to 10m, all were motorized with 75 HP. Seine nets is the main fishing gear used, their lengths were ranged from 120 to 220m with mesh sizes 12-90mm. The number of fishermen in each boat varied from 5 to 15. Twenty three fish species were caught, of which eight were marine species, in addition to shrimps. The total catches ranged from 2513Kg in April-June to 5793Kg in January-March with total catch of 16157Kg. Three species namely catfish Silurus triostegus, crucian carp Carassius carassius and khishni Liza abu constituted 53.02%, 10.20% and 8.08% respectively and shrimps 13.67% of the total catches. The catch per unit of effort ranged from 10.6 to 51.1 Kg/hr/100m, with overall average was 21.5 Kg/hr/100m. The diversity and evenness indices for biomass were 1.26 and 0.49, respectively, in January-March and 1.87 and 0.64, respectively, in October-December. The highest similarity index of species composition was between the periods April-June and October-December (82%) and lowest between the periods October-December and January-March (55%).

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