Seasonal occurrence of potential fishing zones along northern Andhra Pradesh coast

Abstract

Data on potential fishing zones (PFZ), obtained from the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, and advisories for North Andhra coast were segregated season wise and analyzed to understand the trends and the frequency of occurrences of PFZ in North Andhra coast. Plotting of data revealed location of PFZ near coastal regions during summer months. These zones moved towards deeper waters during pre-monsoon, expanding to a larger area as the monsoon progressed and moved north during post-monsoon season. Plotting also revealed that Kakinada waters have frequent PFZ hits especially nearer to the Kakinada bay. Visakhapatnam waters were observed to get high intensity of PFZ hits during Monsoon followed by those during post-monsoon and summer seasons. However in Kalingapatnam waters, high intensity of PFZ occurred during post-monsoon followed by monsoon and summer seasons.