Biological and economical Evaluation of by catch and discards of fisheries for gill net in Bardawil lagoon

Fisheries in Bardawil lagoon involve different types of gears. The present study refers to light on main catch composition of gill net and assessing them bioeconomicaly. The results showed that the gill net catch has 7 species of fish and crustaceans, weighing 10.28 kg in each catch/unit gear. The percentage of catches from gill nets per fishing unit of fishing trip (one night) were as follows: Thin lip Grey mullet, Liza ramada constituted the most dominant fish species (52.22%) followed by Swimming crab, Portunus pelagicus (18.53%) and Grey-mullet, Mugil cephalus (10.78%). According to size evaluation, the average juvenile and adult catches weighting about 4.29Kg (41.71%) and 5.99 kg (58.29%) respectively per unit of fishing trip. The total economic catch (adult) recorded the highest weight in September (8.97 kg / per unit) and June recorded the lowest (4.01 kg / per unit). Also, the high non-economic catch (juvenile) was recorded in September (5.75 kg / per unit) and June recorded the lowest (2.70 / kg per unit). The present results indicated that, the landing of juvenile leads to more losses of stock biomass which formed ≈ 345 tones and about 23.6 million LE losses in one fishing season, 2016.