STOCK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF LETHRINUS NEBULOSUS (FAMILY LETHRINIDAE) OF QATAR WATERS, ARABIAN GULF.

STOCK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF LETHRINUS NEBULOSUS
(FAMILY LETHRINIDAE) OF QATAR WATERS, ARABIAN GULF.
MOHAMED A. IBRAHIM,* KAMAL A. EL-BARY,” AND
JASSIM A. AL-KHA YAT*
* Har. Set. Dept~. Untversttyy of Qatar.
**Fish. Dept. Hintst. Ind. &Agri. Qatar.
ABSTRACT
Samples of lethrinus pebulosus from the trawl
catch of Qatar waters were anaylzed 8t-monthly durtng
May. 1987 to Aprtl. 1988. Age was determined by both
scale examtnatton and lengt~ frequency dtstrtbutton.
The VBGR parameters were esttmated as:
·K·0.145. to· 0.47 years. l~· 85.8 cm
The fish reaches its f1 rst matud ty at 37 cm t n
total length. The age classes 5-7 were relattvely
rare tn the trawltng grollllds, whtle abundant tn the
shallow and reef areas.
The trawl ftshery studfed is based almost enttrely
on 3-4 years old fish. r~1s trawl ffsherY discards,
overboard, a11 ft sh of Iess than .20 cm fn total length.
The exploftatfon ratto of the menttoned specfes
betng around 0.5. The fjshery wtll be afmfng at
overfishfng condftfon unless some measures would
be taken into considerattoq,
The total yteld could be tncreased by about 301
ff regulattng both the ~1nfmum stze fn the catch
and the trap mesh size operattng fn the spawnfng
grounds.