Panaji: Two rarely seen fish species netted by fishermen in the Tiracol and Zuari rivers have caught the attention of fishers and scientists. One of them, the small tooth emperor, a red snapper look-alike, could be the first recorded sighting of the species in Goa’s northern river.The sight of the marine ray-finned fish, Lethrinus microdon of the Lethrinidae family, in his gill net left Keri fisherman Bhushan Pednekar surprised. “I had never caught this fish and when I checked with even elderly fishermen here, they said they had not caught it anytime,” Pednekar said.The lone specimen was hauled in near the mouth of the Tiracol river recently. “Looking at its pointed head, local fishermen thought it was a red snapper (tamso) from the mangroves,” he said.The deep-water fish, which has tiny, sharp teeth, is found in the Arabian Sea and other regions. “In Tiracol estuary, it is a first record as we don’t have it in our list of 150-odd documented here,” said G B Sreekanth, fisheries scientist at ICAR-CCARI, Old Goa.Its conservation status is listed as least concern. “But it is rare even in coastal waters,” Sreekanth said.The other rarely seen species, the bronze croaker (Otolithoides biaurites), locally called moddvonn in Goa and koth in Maharashtra, was netted by Siridao fisherman Rohidas Menezes near St Jacinto island.Small-scale fishers act as community-based citizen scientists by reporting rare and declining fish occurrences, providing valuable field evidence that helps scientists detect changes in fish populations and biodiversity. The deep-water fish with tiny and sharp teeth is found in the Arabian Sea and other regions.“In Tiracol estuary, it is a first record, as we don’t have it in our list of 150-odd documented here,” Sreekanth stated“I saw it after about eight years,” said another Siridao fisherman, Yogesh Santondekar.ICAR-CCARI scientists had earlier recorded the species in the Zuari estuary. It has good commercial value in Maharashtra but is rarely seen in Goa.Bronze croaker belongs to the doddiare family. “More than 20 doddiare types have been recorded in Goa,” Sreekanth said.Fishermen along the Zuari banks said overfishing and other factors had affected fish populations. “We also can’t see the big doddiare (croakers),” Santondekar said.
