Catfishes

Among a wide variety of coastal demersal fish species, the marine catfishes assume prime dominance, by virtue of their abundance in the coastal grounds, vulnerability, migration and behavior. Compared to many other demersal fishes, catfishes are within the affordable range of poor/middle class fish eaters. They have a wide distributional range in the Indo-Pacific region, all along the Indian coastal waters upto the middle shelf with preferential concentration on muddy grounds of 30-70 m depths. They migrate both vertically (diurnal migration) and horizontally (seasonal) in small schools to large shoals in response to seasonal climatic / hydrographic variations, drift pattern, biology and reproductive behaviour of the species. Although the young ones live at the bottom, the adults frequently visit column/surface water and move in shoals along the prevailing drifts of the southwest and southeast monsoon, and become amenable to a variety of fishing gears