Biology of the silver belly, Leiognathus bindus (Val). of the Calicut coast

The silver bellies constitute one of the important inshore fisheries of India. From All- India fish landings it is evident that there have been wide fluctuations in the magnitude of Leiognathus fisheries from1950 to 1953. Of the 7 species of Leiognathus known to occur in the inshore regions, only 6 species are of commercial importance ; even amongst these, L. bindus (Val.) locally called Nalla Mullen is the most abundant in the Malabar coast. A perusal of previous work Chidambaram and Venkataraman (19^6), Devanesan and Chidambaram (194.8), Bhimachar and Venkataraman (1952), Nayar (1958), Venkataraman (i960) and Anon ((962) revealed that very little information is available on the biology and fishery of L. bindus (Val.) a commercially important species. Therefore, it was felt desirable to investigate in detail the biology and fishery of this species at Calicut from 1956 to 1958