Composition and abundance of pelagic shark caught by drift gillnet in Cilacap oceanic fishing port, Indonesia
Drift gillnet fleets in the South of Java part of Indian Ocean were multi-species fisheries. The target of this fleet was tuna and skipjack tuna. Our studies on shark fisheries had been conducted since 2014-2015 and focused on drift gillnets fleets in eastern Indian Ocean, south Java waters around 80 – 100 S and 1060 – 1100 E. The aims of this paper were to presents the information about sharks composition, size distribution and nominal catchper-unit-effort. A total 244 ton catch of sharks was recorded, consisted of 13 species, with an average catch of 9.5 tonnes/month and average CPUE (Vessel Catch/Day) were 12.87 kg/days. The greatest number of species caught with drift gillnet was from Family Alopidae (pelagic and bigeye thresher). Length frequency distribution of Alopias pelagicus from 55 to 185 cmFL (SD± 15.33) and for Alopias superciliosus ranged from 90 to 268 cmFL (SD± 27.05).