Diversity, abundance and seasonal variation of the ichthyofauna associated with shrimp farming in a tropical estuary in northeastern Brazil

Abstract

The precarious nature of the existing data on marine fish diversity on a global scale is accentuated in tropical areas, where taxonomic inventories of fish species are particularly incomplete. In the present study, we investigated the diversity, abundance and seasonal variation of the ichthyofauna associated with shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei Boone, 1931) farming in a tropical estuary in northeastern Brazil. The experimental data were obtained at an aquaculture farm located on margins of the Guaraíras lagoon (06°12′S, 35°09′ W) in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. We sampled four shrimp culture cycles carried out from April to November 2005 during the rainy and dry seasons. Fishes were harvested at the termination of each culture cycle. We collected 36,681 fishes, comprising 26 families and 54 species. Shrimp culture cycles conducted in the dry season presented a more diverse fish community, albeit less abundant, than culture cycles carried out in the wet period. The most abundant families were Engraulidae in the wet season and Scianidae in the dry period. Juveniles of the engraulid Lycengraulis grossidens (Agassiz, 1989), a marine migrant, represented 87.67 % of total abundance in the wet season and 35.26 % of all individuals in the dry period. In conclusion, this study provides evidence of an abundant and diverse ichthyofauna associated with shrimp farming in northeastern Brazil. It also points to the necessity of finding alternatives to mitigate the entrainment of larval and juvenile fishes in shrimp ponds.

Continental fishes from the Tambaba Environmentally Protected Area, Paraíba State, Brazil

“…The second species also tolerates environments with different levels of salinity since it is a migratory species inhabiting the ocean in adult stage and estuaries while juvenile that functioning as nursery areas (Carvalho et al, 2007). Abundance of these marine-estuarine species is also noticed in other estuarine areas from the Northeastern region of Brazil as seen in Reis-Filho et al (2010), Costa & Camara (2012), Reis-Filho et al (2012), andCampos et al (2015). These species are of commercial importance to artisanal fisheries throughout the Brazilian coast (Soares-Filho et al, 2010).…”