Monitoring Condition Factor
of the Dominant Fin Fishes
in the Estuaries of Lower Gangetic Delta
in the Backdrop of Climate Change
Ankita Mitra, Sufia Zaman, Prosenjit Pramanick and Shampa Mitra
Abstract The current global fisheries production is *160 million tonnes. The
quantum is gradually rising as a result of increases in aquaculture production.
A number of climate-related threats to capture both the fisheries and aquaculture are
identified, but we have high uncertainty in predictions of the future fisheries production because of uncertainty over the future global aquatic net primary production and the transfer of this production through the food chain to human
consumption. Recent changes in the distribution and productivity of a number of
fish species can be ascribed with high confidence to regional climate variability,
such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The future production may increase in
some high-latitude regions because of warming and decreased ice cover, but the
dynamics in low-latitude regions are governed by different processes, and production may decline as a result of reduced vertical mixing of the water column and,
hence, reduced recycling of nutrients. There are strong interactions between the
effects of fishing and the effects of climate because fishing reduces the age, size and
geographic diversity of populations and the biodiversity of marine ecosystems,
making both more sensitive to additional stresses such as climate change-induced
salinity oscillation. The estuaries in the lower Gangetic delta at the apex of Bay of
Bengal are noted for contrasting spatial variation of salinity. The Hooghly estuary
in the western sector is relatively low saline compared to the Matla estuary in the
central sector on account of receiving the fresh water discharge from the Farakka
barrage. The central sector is hyper saline due to siltation of the Bidyadhari River
since the late fifteenth century. The present study evaluates the condition factor of
fourteen commercially important fin fish species (that constitute *75 % of the
fishes in the catch basket) collected from the Hooghly and Matla estuaries in the
western and central sectors of the lower Gangetic delta, respectively. Relatively
A. Mitra (&)
Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences,
School of Life Sciences, Puducherry, India
e-mail: mitrankita92@gmail.com
S. Zaman Á P. Pramanick Á S. Mitra
Department of Oceanography, Techno India University,
Salt Lake Campus, Kolkata 700091, India
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
S. Nautiyal et al. (eds.), Climate Change Challenge (3C)
and Social-Economic-Ecological Interface-Building, Environmental Science,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31014-5_20
347
of the Dominant Fin Fishes
in the Estuaries of Lower Gangetic Delta
in the Backdrop of Climate Change
Ankita Mitra, Sufia Zaman, Prosenjit Pramanick and Shampa Mitra
Abstract The current global fisheries production is *160 million tonnes. The
quantum is gradually rising as a result of increases in aquaculture production.
A number of climate-related threats to capture both the fisheries and aquaculture are
identified, but we have high uncertainty in predictions of the future fisheries production because of uncertainty over the future global aquatic net primary production and the transfer of this production through the food chain to human
consumption. Recent changes in the distribution and productivity of a number of
fish species can be ascribed with high confidence to regional climate variability,
such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The future production may increase in
some high-latitude regions because of warming and decreased ice cover, but the
dynamics in low-latitude regions are governed by different processes, and production may decline as a result of reduced vertical mixing of the water column and,
hence, reduced recycling of nutrients. There are strong interactions between the
effects of fishing and the effects of climate because fishing reduces the age, size and
geographic diversity of populations and the biodiversity of marine ecosystems,
making both more sensitive to additional stresses such as climate change-induced
salinity oscillation. The estuaries in the lower Gangetic delta at the apex of Bay of
Bengal are noted for contrasting spatial variation of salinity. The Hooghly estuary
in the western sector is relatively low saline compared to the Matla estuary in the
central sector on account of receiving the fresh water discharge from the Farakka
barrage. The central sector is hyper saline due to siltation of the Bidyadhari River
since the late fifteenth century. The present study evaluates the condition factor of
fourteen commercially important fin fish species (that constitute *75 % of the
fishes in the catch basket) collected from the Hooghly and Matla estuaries in the
western and central sectors of the lower Gangetic delta, respectively. Relatively
A. Mitra (&)
Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences,
School of Life Sciences, Puducherry, India
e-mail: mitrankita92@gmail.com
S. Zaman Á P. Pramanick Á S. Mitra
Department of Oceanography, Techno India University,
Salt Lake Campus, Kolkata 700091, India
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
S. Nautiyal et al. (eds.), Climate Change Challenge (3C)
and Social-Economic-Ecological Interface-Building, Environmental Science,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31014-5_20
347