An Account of Ichthyofauna of Digha Coast, West Bengal

Abstract

Digha (Lat 21036’ Long 87030’) is a famous seaside resort town in the district of Purba Medinipur of the state of West Bengal and situated at the northern end of Bay of Bengal. Also, this place is located near the Gangetic mouth, provides most peculiar habitat of shallow muddy beach with lot of sedimentation load coming from Ganga riverine system. It is also one of the major marine fish landing stations as well as famous beach destination of east cost of India. Numerous studies have already been made to inventories the ichthyological faunal diversity of Digha coast by Manna and Goswami (1985), Goswami (1992), Talwar et al. (1992), Chatterjee et. al. (2000). In recent times, the studies made by Yennawar and Tudu (2010), Yennawar et al. (2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2012d), Mohapatra et. al. (2012a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2015a, 2016), Ray et. al. (2012a, 2012b, 2013, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2015d, 2016), Ray and Mohapatra (2013, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c) added many more fishes to the list of Digha coast. During the routine efforts of maintain diversity of public aquarium in this Centre, around 103 species added to the existing species list of the area. The previous compilation of ichthyofauna of the region contributed 212 species from 145 genera and 88 families (Chatterjee et al., 2000) and 238 species from 72 families (Manna and Goswami, 1985; Goswami, 1992). The present study provides most updated list of ichthyofaunal diversity of Digha coast and 48 species are first time record to Digha locality and totalling the updated list to 340 species from the region. The present study gives updated checklist of ichthyofauna of the coast which may be helpful in conservation of local fauna and mass awareness among tourists visiting Digha as well as local administration.