With the fall in marine catches, especially Indian oil sardines, fisheries scientists are proposing a new deep sea fish as an alternative food source in the conventional fish items. During an interaction with trawler boat owners and fishermen community, the Kochi-based Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT) introduced myctophids or lanternfish as a potential commercial food item. Lanternfishes are found in deep sea. Richly proteinaceous, CIFT scientists said that this could help tide over the present crisis of catch shortage. “We were in search of new fishery resources to strengthen fisheries sector. In this context, of the 1,000 million tonnes, the myctophid species are considered to be one of the promising fishery resources. The species have the potential to become a major source of fish protein when it is efficiently harvested, appropriately processed and value-added technologies are incorporated. Some of them are already being used for production of fish meal and oil and only a meagre percentage is used directly for human consumption as of now,” said CIFT director C N Ravishankar. A major concern that needs to be addressed in introducing lanternfish is that fishermen would need special nets to catch them. The fish, as its name suggests illuminate the area with their presence. They are found in black, silver and blue. They have vertical migrations. During day, most species remain almost 1,000ft down and in night, they come up as high as 5ft,” said Amulya Kumar Mohanty, head, extension division of CIFT. “We will have to design special nets to catch these species because of their ability to migrate so deep during day. They are now being used as fish feed and to make fertilizers,” said Leela Edwin, principal scientist. The trials of these new nets will be done soon.
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