Fishing Gears, Catch Composition and Relative Abundance of Commercial Species in Suez Canal Lakes, Egypt.

The Suez Canal has three lakes including Timsah, and the Great and Little Bitter Lakes, which are important fishery resources in Egypt. These lakes produce highly economically important fish species, viz. grey mullet, shrimp, cuttlefish, striped piggy, crab, soles, gastropods and bivalves. The Timsah Lake is located nearly halfway along the Suez Canal between 30° 13' 00" to 32° 35' 18" N and 32° 16' 30" to 32° 18' 30" E. It is a shallowwater basin with an average depth of about 6m and a surface area of nearly 15km2. It is a brackish lake with significant variations in salinity. The Bitter Lakes (30°20' N, 32°23' E), the largest water bodies along the Suez Canal, are saline lakes with a surface area of about 250km². The total annual commercial landings from Suez Canal lakes varied between 6289 and 2260 tons during the last 20 years. In 2020, a total of 3428 tons landed corresponded to a value of almost 300 million LE. A number of fishing methods are used in the lakes including gill nets, crab nets, shrimp nets, beach seine, hattata and trammel nets. The present work investigated the fishing methods used in Suez Canal lakes, their characteristics, the catch composition, catch trend and the relative abundance of different commercial species measured by the catch per unit fishing effort CPUE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]