Rare landing of Indian mottled eel, Anguilla bengalensis (Gray, 1831)udfrom coastal waters of Karwar

摘要

A large sized freshwater eel, locally calledud‘hemmalaga’ in Kannada and ‘kadai’ in Konkani wasudlanded by shore-seine (Yendi) on 26-07-2013 atudAligadda landing centre in Karwar. The fish wasudcaught live and was observed to be very active. Theudspecimen was identified as Indian mottled eel,udAnguilla bengalensis (Gray, 1831) of familyudAnguillidae. The specimen was an adult female withuda total length of 142 cm and weight of 6.82 kg.udOther morphometric measurements recorded wereudas follows: The dorsal fin length (96 cm), anal finudlength (78.5 cm), pectoral fin length (11.5 cm), girthud(32.5 cm), head length (29 cm) and head width (18udcm). The specimen appears to be the largest recordudof Anguilla bengalensis caught in the Indian coastaludwaters. The maximum reported length and weightudof this species published in FishBase’ is 200 cm andud6 kg. A total length of 120 cm for this species isudreported by Menon et al (1998). Although the lengthudof the present specimen is only 142 cm the weightudseems to be the maximum reported so far.