Length –Weight Relationship, Feeding and Reproductive Study of Wolf Herring, Chirocentrus Dorab (Clupieformes: Chirocentridae)

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the morphometric and feeding and reproductive of dorab wolf herring in the coastal waters. Trophic level and some aspects of the feeding and reproductive biology of Wolf Herring were studied. Population growth was estimated using length (L) , weight (W) relationship with the equation W = a L b. Results show that b value for C. dorab (3.043) was close to 3.0, showing isometric growth pattern meaning that the increment of length are almost equal to increment of weight; also the intercept a was 0.00334 and ( r2 = 0.99084) indicating a high degree of positive correlation between total length and total weight for C. dorab .The dominant length of the C. dorab wolf herring is 33.9 – 89 cm and dominant weight ranges from 150 grams - 2800 grams. Estimation of reproductive potential through gonadosomatic index calculation was also conducted, which was at range between 0.546 - 11.078 with the calculated GSI mean of 4.13 and there is a positive relationship between GSI and total body length. The correlation coefficient, regression equation and significance correlation of fecundity found to be highly correlated with total fecundity of 187979, mean number of eggs (7968±1861.4), mean total length of (72.4333±3.3) cm and mean total weight of (1590±157.7) grams. Results illustrated that small fish were the most abundant prey items in the stomach of wolf herring.