PROCEEDINGS OF e SCIENCE CONGRESS NDIAN CIENCE ONGRESS 3-7JAN Gniversity of Mumbai SECTION OF ANIMAL, VETERINARY AND FISHERY SCIENCES PRESIDENT PROF. M. K.JYOTI THE INDIAN SCIENCE CONGRESS ASSOCIATION, KOLKATA102" Indian Science Congress, Part II : Abstract Oral/ Poster Presentation FD-0-4 FISH BIODIVERSITY OF SUNDARBANS - CURRENT STATUS, POTENTIALS, THREATS & MANAGEMENT ISSUES Mahapatra B. K.', U. K. Sarkar? and W. S. Lakra® 1.ICAR -Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Kolkata Centre, Sector-V, Kolkata— 700 091. E-Mail: bkmahapatra@eife.edu.in 2.ICAR-National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, Lucknow-226 002, Uttar Pradesh 3.ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Seven Bunglows, Varsova, Mumbai-400 06 Key words: Fish biodiversity, utilization, resources, threats, conservation, ‘Sundarbans Biodiversity and its conservation are regarded as one of the major issues of enabling sustainable use of natural resources. Out of the total fish production in the world, the country ranks third and shares about 11.72 % of global fish biodiversity. Besides a source of food and nutrition, fish genetic resources are also important source of various products of pharmaceutical and other commercial value and sustain other related trades like ornamental fishes. The Indian Sundarbans (latitude 21° 322 -22°402 N, longitude 88° 222 - 89°02 E) in the north east coast of India occupy 9630 square kilometre and are bounded by River Hooghly in the West, River Raimangal in the East, Bay of Bengal in the South and Dampier Hodges line in the North. The diversified fin fish and shell fishresources. of the Sundarbans consists freshwater, brackish water and marine species. The diversified fish species have tremendous potential for food, ornamental, industrial and medicinal importance. The threats to the Sundarbans mangrove eco-system are arising partly due to biotic pressure from the surrounding environment and, partly due to human induced or natural changes in the upper catchments. High salinity, low water table, acidity problem, pollution, overfishing, destruction of juvenile and prawn seed collection is a major concern: on fish biodiversity. Thestrategy for Sundarbans conservationinvolves the setting aside of areas where the entirelife-cycle needs of a community can be met and the ecologicalneeds. of wildlife can be linked into the overallmanagement of the system for the Sundarbans. The: development and implementation of appropriate biological diversity management strategy (224)Section II : Animal, Veterinary and Fishery Sciences in general and fish diversity management strategies of the Sundarbans in particular will be achallenging task and requires concerted, efforts and requires a lot of dedicated collaborative research and management approach which must involve actively grass root level people and traditional knowledge. There are important gaps in our knowledge of the regulating mechanisms of fish and aquatic biodiversity and the relationship of biodiversity to ecosystem services. Our study addresses the challenging issues for sustaining aquatic biodiversity and management issues. FD-O-5 BIODIVERSITY AND SEASONAL VARIATION OF ZOOPLANKTON IN THE PANCHAPALLI RESERVOIR, DHARMAPURI DISTRICT, TAMIL NADU, INDIA Manickam N.', P. Saravana Bhavan', T. Muralisankar', V. Srinivasan’, P. Santhanam’, K. Vijayadevan’, P. Chitrarasu‘, A. Jawahar Ali‘ and K. Altaff* 1.Crustacean Biology Laboratory, Department of Zoology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore-641 046, Tamilnadu, India. 2.Marine Planktonology & Aquaculture Division, Department of Marine Science,Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli-620 024, Tamilnadu, India. 3.Department of Zoology, Government Arts College, Dharmapuri-636701, Tamilnadu, India, 4, PG and Research Department of Zoology, The New College, Chennai 600 014, Tamilnadu, India. E-mail: nmanickamS@gmail.com; manickamn55@yahoo.com Key words: Biodiversity, Zooplankton, Rotifera, Copepoda, Cladocera, Ostracoda Planktons have immense value as food and play an important role in disposal of sewage and natural purifiers of water. Zooplanktons are cosmopolitan in distribution. In the present study, investigation was carried out in the Panchapalli reservoir (Latitude 12°48’21" N and Longitude 77°92’96" E, at Dharmapuri District, Tamilnadu, India), for physico-chemical characteristics and biodiversity of zooplankton community fora period of two years from March- 2011 to Febrery-2013 on monthly interval basis. A total of 30 species belongs to (225)