Occurrence of pelagic thresher shark, Alopias pelagicusud(Alopiidae: Laminiformes) from the Tuticorin, Gulf of Mannar

摘要

The family Alopiidae (thresher sharks) is founduddistributed worldwide in tropical and temperateudseas. Alopiidae have one genus and three speciesudviz., the pelagic thresher, Alopias pelagicusudNakamura, 1935, the bigeye thresher, A.udsuperciliosus (Lowe, 1839) and the commonudthresher, A. vulpinus (Bonnaterre, 1788). On 20thudJune, 2013 a single specimen of A. pelagicus (Sex:udfemale; total length: 270 cm; weight: 3000 g) wasudlanded in by large meshed drift gillnet (“Paruvalai”)udoperated from fishing craft (“Vallam”) inudTharuvaikulam fish landing centre. The gear wasudoperated between 100 and 150 m depth, at auddistance of 60 nautical miles from the coast. Theudspecimen was photographed and morphometricudmeasurements were made with a measuring tapeudto the nearest centimeter and weight was taken toudthe nearest gram. The species identification wasudcarried out based on Compagno (1984).