Vol. 10, Special Issue 9 (2021)

Author(s):
Ishrat Shafi, Syed Talia Mushtaq, Hudisa Bano, Tasaduq Hussain Shah and Syed Aalia Mushtaq

Abstract:
Schizothorax esocinus,locally known as “Chirruh” is an indigenous cyprinid fish of Dal Lake Kashmir. The fish is commercially important and well adapted along with other cyprinids inhabiting the lake. The present study was aimed to describe morphometric and meristic characters of S. esocinus from Dal Lake, Kashmir. 30 specimen of S. esocinus were collected from Dal Lake, for which fourteen morphometric measurements and five meristic count parameters were studied. The fin formula of S. esocinus was devised as D, I+5-10, P, I +7-11, C, I +15-23, A, I+3-7. The total length of the specimen ranged from 136.30 mm to 297 mm with the corresponding weight being 18.17 gms and 159.51 gms respectively. The various morphological characters compared showed high co-efficient of correlation (r) values, indicating that the characters were highly correlated to each other with highest correlation coefficient value found between total length and standard length (r= 0.7829).