Preface Fish is promoted as the most advantageous of creature proteins for people. Eating fish in any event is suggested by all driving wellbeing bodies for insurance against heart sicknesses, stroke, diabetes, pulse etc. Fish has been a part of conventional Indian weight control plans of the beach front locales for quite a long time. It is anything but difficult to source and cook and can be singed, bubbled, heated or broiled. It packs incredible flavor alongside medical advantages. Indian eating regimens are especially inadequate in proteins besides in zones where fish is effectively accessible. Pisciculture has received increased attention in various parts of the globe to increase food resources. The issue of transport of live fish or their seeds is closely linked to a successful pisciculture programme. Modern methods of transporting live fishes are practically difficult in India, where communication is insufficient and distance prohibitive. Air-breathing fish culture attracted the attention of aqua-culturists during late 20th century, and many varieties of air-breathing fishes were successfully bred using heteroplastic pituitary extract (Ramaswamy and Sundararaj, 1957; Moitra et al, 1979). However, because of their heavy mortality, traditional transport of spawn, fry and fingerlings in different open and closed containers poses major problems. Different factors such as oxygen depletion and increase in carbon dioxide tension, ammonia accumulation, pH reduction, overcrowding injury and hyperactivity (Jhingran, 1991, Pandit and Ghosh, 2012) are responsible for the death of different fish stages. Mortality during the transport of live fish is high, mainly due to stress. Stress tolerance levels of some commonly cultured fish are given below: High tolerance levels are shown by black carp, catfish, common carp, mud carp, gourami and Oreochromis. Medium tolerance levels are shown by bighead carp, Indian carps and grass carp. Low tolerance level is shown by silver carp. India is home to in excess of 10% of the worldwide fish variety. As of now, the nation positions second on the planet in complete fish creation with a yearly fish creation of about 9.06 million metric tons. Freshwater fishery adds to more than 95 percent of the total aquaculture production. Very recently, COVID-19 Coronavirus and the ensuing lockdown have adversely affected Indian fisheries. In any case, India isn't the only one. Extreme monetary misfortunes to fisheries have been accounted for across the world, and in all cases, the harm has been most noteworthy for send out driven fisheries with complex stock chains (Stokesa et al, 2020). Resumed fisheries confronted disturbed ware chains, a huge absence of customer interest, and a rising apprehension of being tainted by COVID-19. Transient fishers—who make up an enormous piece of India's automated fishing labour force—were in no condition to go fishing. They had been abandoned for quite a long time in unfortunate conditions, on boats or at swarmed fishing harbors and they just wished to return home. Every one of these circumstances is showing the significance of a superior transportation strategy to vitalize fishery area. The oxygen requirement of a fish depends upon a variety of extrinsic and intrinsic factors that play an important role in body size. It is essential to assess the oxygen requirement of these fishes in order to overcome the problem of high mortality of fishes during transportation at their early stages of development. Fish are generally transported in containers such as cans of different sizes, pots of ceramic or metal, wooden or metal buckets, vats, barrels, plastic bags, Styrofoam boxes, bottles, jugs, animal skins and bamboo sections. Almost any clean, waterproof container may be used. Certain containers provide good insulation from heat, for example, wood or Styrofoam. Containers like metal or plastic are poor insulators and may have to be wrapped with wet towels or packed with ice to keep temperatures down. In India, various species of Anabas, Channa (=Ophiocephalus), Clarias, Heteropneustes (=Saccobranchus) and Osphronemus are considered to be economically important air-breathing fishes in Bihar, Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and South India’s swamps and weedy water. They are known for their higher nutritional, recuperative and medicinal characteristics, which sometimes preferred over major carps and recommended during convalescence as a diet. The interest for live fish is high in India, and its cost surpasses from the frosted dead fish by INR 100–250/kg. The Indian fish market was worth INR 1,110 Billion during 2018. The market is projected to arrive at INR 1,998 Billion by 2024. Anabas, commonly known as the climbing perch, koi or kawai belongs to the order Perciforms. It is widely spread across countries in South East Asia including India. Anabas has narrow trunked species as Anabas testudineus (Bloch). It is cultivated with Heteropneustes (=Saccobranchus) fossilis and Clarias batrachus and grows to about 15 to 23 cm. Fry and larval stages of Anabas testudineus are zooplankton feeders, but they become carnivorous later. Four species of Channa (Order: Ophiocephaliformis) are common in India, namely, Channa punctatus (Bloch, 1793) or Channa punctatus (Menon, 1974), Channa marulius (Hamilton, 1822), Channa gachua (Hamilton, 1822) and Channa striata (Bloch, 1793). Two new species of Channa namely Channa aurantipectoralis and Channa pardalis have been reported recently (http://www.catalogueoflife.org/ Accessed 2017). They are also known as snake headed murrel or garai and regarded as a good table fish in several parts of India. Channa punctatus matures when they are about a year of age (body weight=8g and total length=about 8.5cm). Progress in murrel culture depends upon the success in raising the fry and fingerlings. The developmental stages of Indian air breathing fishes can be shipped without oxygen pressing. Polythene drums or iron drums are utilized for transport of fry or fingerlings. The transporter should have enough space for their routine surfacing to breathe climatic air. The essential standards of fish transport and the principle factors inf luencing it (fish species, developmental stages of fish and quality, length of transportation, temperature, oxygen content, group size, behavior of fish, fish impact of anaesthetics, digestion items, and so on) will assessed based on an examination of the appropriate writing. The shut vehicle units will be portrayed and the densities of moved fish per unit volume under genuine conditions will be organized for direction. It was observed that many technological and conditional changes, like pandemic due to COVID-19, have been reported at both the local and global level concerning live fish transportation. In this context, the book is written with a hope that it will invigorate the interest among the students as well as the teachers. It covers all the important aspects of live fish transportation along with the latest related developments and information. Proper sanitization of all the equipments and accessories is one of the essential steps for fish transportation in this pandemic. The book has been compiled in ten chapters. Chapter-III to Chapter-VII is sub headed into Introduction, Materials and Methods, Observations and Results and Discussion. Subject index is designed to locate the important terms and name of fish. A separate author index has also been added. The cited references are enlisted under bibliography. The summary of the contents of the book may be pointed as: Chapter-I is planned to discuss introductory aspects of fish transportation. Chapter-II explains brief historical review of the process of fish transportation. Chapter-III begins with the process of determination of aquatic and bimodal oxygen uptake of fishes. The detailed account of oxygen uptake seems to be plinth for fish transportation. Chapter-IV gives an account of oxygen uptake of fishes under association in still water and continuously flowing water conditions. The information is necessary for the calculation of either increase or decrease of oxygen requirement during packing of fishes in a grouped condition. The study helps in determination of optimum number of fishes considered for packing. Chapter-V explains determination of optimum dose of anaesthetics namely Benzocaine and MS-222 of fishes and its effect on the oxygen uptake. The information is helpful for the calculation of decrease of oxygen requirement during packing of fishes. Chapter-VI deals with effect of ammonia on ultra structure of gill under scanning electron microscope and oxygen uptake of fishes. The study is helpful in deciding calculation of complete requirement of oxygen for packing. Chapter-VII critically explains evaluation of suitable packing conditions based on the information from Chapters III to VI under normal situation and present situation of COVID-19. Chapter-VIII reviews a general discussion of entire account of various processes of fish transportation. Chapter-IX describes summary and conclusions observed from the work of fish transportation. Chapter-X deals with a flow sheet, a proposal and a future scope of fish transportation.

Inland fisheries are important global contributors to food security, livelihoods, and ecosystem services. A report on the global snapshot of expert-perceived impacts of COVID-19 on inland fisheries has been submitted by Stokesa et al, (2020). They studied an online survey to determine perceptions of Inland fisheries pressures between June and July 2020. They also analysed pandemic impacts on inland fisheries, based on the responses analyzed against fish capture and human development index data.

India is facing with the issue of food production, especially the production of protein resources. The food production rate in India is insufficient to cope up with an alarmingly growing population. Protein deficiency is currently the most serious human malnutritional problem, with protein deficiency affecting about 30% of the world’s population. To cope up with the current situation, there is therefore a need for an all-out effort to increase food production especially the production of animal protein. Pisciculture has acquired primary importance in this context, and the culture of Indian major carps and their allies is now a common practice. For a long time, the culture of air-breathing fishes in the derelict water has remained neglected. Many such fishes, however, have become popular in the recent past, being rich in their food value. The demand for fish as nutritious food is increasing day by day, as it is a good source of high quality-protein and lipid and is more palatable than vegetables. It is relished for its characteristic flavour due to high myofibrillar and low stroma protein, rich in essential amino acids particularly lysine and arginine (Kinsella, 1986). Fish proteins play a beneficial role in lipid and cholesterol metabolism by reducing triacylglycerol (=triglyceride) and phospholipid levels in plasma (Tsukuda and Arai, 1986). These proteins occupy an important place in human nutrition due to their high digestibility and growth-promoting value. Fish lipid has a high amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUSFAS), which reduce plasma cholesterol, and this helps in ischemic heart disease and arteriosclerosis (Kinsella, 1986).

Introduction Oxygen uptake of fish(s) displays its basal metabolic status and is taken into consideration as one of the signs of the overall fitness or/and well-being of the fish. It can also be beneficial to evaluate the physiological state of a living organism, facilitates in comparing the susceptibility or resistance potentiality and additionally beneficial to correlate the behaviour of the animal, which ultimately serve as predictors of functional disruptions of population. Analysis of Oxygen uptake machine to assess the primary harm or demand inflicted at the animal that can both boom or lower the oxygen uptake (Neelima et al, 2016). The maximum vital single issue in transporting fish is imparting an adequate level of dissolved oxygen. Heavier fish transported in warmer water want more oxygen. For instance, if the water will increase by temperature 10°C (e.g., from 10 to 20°C), Oxygen uptake is roughly doubled. Respiration of air-breathing fishes has fascinated researchers for a minimum of a century; the earliest attempts to measure oxygen uptake (V? O2) and respiratory partitioning date to the 19th century (Baumert, 1853). The available general respirometry methods have been explained and reviewed by numerous authors (Cech, 1990; Lighton, 2008; Lefevre et al, 2016; Zhang et al, 2019), and researches of the respiration of air-breathing fishes had been reviewed in element within side the iconic book by Graham (1997). Air-breathing fish are generally characterized by a significant reduction in gill surface area with a purpose to keep away loss of oxygen taken up in the air-breathing organ (ABO) at the site of the gills in hypoxic water (Scott et al, 2017; Pelster et al, 2020).

Introduction Oxygen uptake in fishes is affected not only by the abiotic factors of the environment but is also affected due to various biotic factors. Works on fish aggregation reveal that oxygen uptake of a fish is changed by the number of fishes mutually participating in respiration which has been demonstrated by various workers. The variation in oxygen uptake when fishes of either similar or different genera or species are kept in an association is known as the group effect. The variation in oxygen uptake due to the group effect is an established fact. The investigation and approaches of Allee (1931); Schtefanesku (1958); Malyukina et al, (1962); Grigor’eva (1966); Umezawa and Watannbe (1979), Wares II and Igram (1979), Umezawa et al, (1981) Imabayshi and Takahashi (1987), etc. are worth mentioning and regarded as milestones in this field. Allee (1931), Shlaifer (1938); Geyer and Mann (1939), Job (1955); Delco (1963); Uematsu (1971); Parker (1973), Itazawa et al, (1978); Smatresk and Herreid (1980); Kanda and Itazawa (1981); Singh and Munshi (1985) and Jha (1995) have observed that grouping lowers down the oxygen uptake of fishes but the reverse relationship was also reported by Bowen (1932); Schuett (1934), Brett and Sutherland (1965), Umezawa and Kanikawa (1980), Ghosh et al, (1994), Krause and Ruxton (2002), Pandit and Ghosh (2007), Ward and Webster (2016). In due course, different aspects of grouping have been studied by various workers and many terms are proposed accordingly to explain the phenomenon.

Introduction In fish culture, anesthetic agents are commonly used in vaccination, labeling, and various measurements (Gomes et al, 2006; Collymore et al, 2014). But no agents have been able to obtain long-duration anesthesia in fishes. The use of conventional anesthetic agents in fisheries is not beneficial in terms of environmental safety as the discarded solutions directly reach oceans and rivers. The use of anesthetic agents presenting a risk of staying in the tissues of cultivated fish has been warned against. For example, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries caution against the use of anesthetic agents within 7 days before fishes and shellfishes are caught. The use of anaesthetics has gained considerable importance in Fishery Science particularly during spawning (Colesante, 1977; Kidd and Banks, 1990) and transportation of live fishes or their early developmental stages (Maheshwari 1990; Jhingran, 1991; Pandit and Ghosh, 2012). This is because handling causes stress and physical damage to the fish, loss of mucilaginous covering, which in turn makes the fish susceptible to attack by bacteria and fungi (Brown, 1987). The anaesthetics are soothing medicines that reduce the metabolism and control the excitability as well as stress in a fish. Recently, Kugino et al, (2016) investigated whether the addition of nano oxygen-carrying bubbles to water at the same time as dissolved carbon-dioxide could result in safe, long-duration fish anesthesia.

Introduction Ammonia has been described as one of the most significant limiting factors for the growth and survival of aquatic living resources among water quality criteria (Russo and Thurston, 1991). Ammonia is a common pollutant of water bodies and forms the main nitrogenous waste in fishes (Tomasso et al, 1980). It enters the river and stream directly from livestock wastes and indirectly via poorly treated waste-water discharge. The chemistry of ammonia in freshwater has been extensively reviewed and its toxicity to the fish is generally expressed as ammonia concentration (EIFAC, 1970; WHO, 1986). Ammonia is produced mainly in the fish liver (Goldstein et al, 1982), it reaches the gills through the blood (Evans and More, 1988), excreted through the epithelium (Evans and Cameron, 1986) and finally released into the water body. The accumulation of nitrogen may induce alternations in branchial tissue and causes fish mortality (Peters et al, 1984; Woker and Wuhrmann, 1950). Ammonia is a weak base, in the acidic range almost all the ammonia gets converted to ammonium ion (NH4 +) but only a fraction of ammonia forms such ion at alkaline pH. However, in physiological ranges (pH: 7 to 8) about 2.5% of ammonia exists in a unionized form (Paley et al, 1993). The toxicity of ammonia in water is mainly the result of its unionized form (Richardson, 1997). The unionized ammonia accounts for the major part of metabolic ammonia excretion by diffusion down its concentration gradient (Cameron and Heisler, 1983). The unionized ammonia determines the toxicity level in the water and brings about great problems in pisciculture by causing various diseases (Burrows, 1964; Smart, 1976) and alternations in normal physiology (Cairns et al, 1975; Sarkar and Pramanik, 1986). The ratio of unionized ammonia to the total ammonia mainly depends on the pH and temperature of the freshwater. The concentration of unionized ammonia increases with increasing pH and temperature (Emerson et al, 1975). A rise in temperature and pH from 200C to 25°C and 7.5 to 8.5 respectively gives the fifteen-fold increase in the amount of unionized ammonia.

Introduction In the past few decades, there has been a considerable demand for certain air-breathing fishes from India, mainly in the research laboratories of western countries. This is probably due to their unique modifications, especially in the respiratory and circulatory systems. Though, the air-breathing fishes are capable of extracting oxygen both from water as well as air, yet their transportation to long distances in living conditions posed several problems, such as hypoxia, injury, disease and finally death. Proper sanitization of all the equipment and accessories is one of the essential steps for the study of the structure of gills, determination of oxygen uptake of fishes under normal conditions, under the association, under anaesthetization, under ammonia toxicity and all other steps of packing and transportation in this pandemic of COVID-19. For effective live fish transportation, inside and out comprehension on the ideal ecological conditions for negligible pressure and greatest endurance is required. At the point when the fish leaves its normal climate, it should be in a self-supportable climate that provisions important necessities, for example, ideal temperature, oxygen and so forth. Transportation of different life cycle stages (spawn, hatchlings, fry, fingerlings and adults) of fish is traditionally done in different types of containers. The age-old practice of transportation entails heavy mortality probably due to depletion of oxygen, hypertension of carbon dioxide, the toxicity of accumulating wastes, hyperactive strain and exhaustion, infection, injury and variation in pH, temperature, salinity and hardness etc (Jhingran, 1985). A portion of dissolved oxygen is utilized both by the fish and other microorganisms for their metabolism. As a result, the system becomes gradually deplete of oxygen and affects the fish. To overcome the problem of high mortality during transportation, it is essential to evaluate suitable conditions for their transportation. An inexpensive or less expensive method of live fish transport will help our aqua-culturists in many ways.

In most of the underdeveloped and developing countries, regional diets are monotonous, unbalanced and poor in quality having a high percentage of starchy components and inadequate proportion of protein. The long-term solution to the problem of protein malnutrition lies in the greater production and better distribution of a protein-rich diet. Fish offers protein in a cheap and alternative form. Probably due to this, man has exploited the hydrosphere for food and consequently the history of the development of pisciculture. As the fish perishes rapidly, methods have been devised to keep the fish fresh between the catch and consumption. The development of fisheries in India has attained considerable progress in increasing the per hectare yield of carps by controlled breeding and rearing of the young ones. Keeping the pace of development, the culture of air-breathing fishes has attracted the attention of aqua-culturists. Many varieties of these fishes have been successfully bred using pituitary extract (Ramaswami and Sundararaj, 1957; Moitra et al, 1979; Thakur, 1976). The traditional methods of transport of spawn, fry, fingerlings and even brooders in various open and closed systems pose major problems due to their heavy mortality. The mortality of live fishes is high mostly due to stress during transportation. For a long, studies on different aspects of transportation of carps and their allies have been carried out by fishery scientists. Some of the works which need special mention are that of Khan (1939, 1946), Ganapati and Chako (1951), Ranade and Kewalramani (1956), Saha and Chowdhury (1956), Saha et al, (1956a and b), Ramchandran (1969), Singh (1977), Selvaraj et al, (1981) and Jha (1995) etc. In comparison to Indian major carps, consumption of air-breathing fish is not so popular although they are a rich source of protein. However, their demand is gradually increasing. Much has to be done to meet the increasing demand of air-breathing fishes to exploit the maximum available derelict water. The two commercially important Indian air-breathing fishes, Anabas testudineus (Bloch) and Channa punctatus (Bloch) commonly known as climbing perch and snake-headed murrel belong to the order Perciformes and Channiformes respectively. They live in different trophic zones of swamps and derelict ponds and are highly predatory habits. In the present work, oxygen uptake has been observed in Anabas testudineus and Channa punctatus concerning their body weight and group size. The effect of anaesthetic on the oxygen uptake and the effect of ammonia on the structure and function of the gills in Channa punctatus have also been studied. The findings have been used to evaluate suitable methods for long-distance transportation of these fishes. As we surviving in the COVID-19 pandemic, proper sanitization of all the equipment and accessories is one of the essential steps for fish transportation.

Fish transport is a vast area comprising the problems of purely technical design on the one hand, and the chemistry of water, biological reactions of fish and the like, on the other. The above survey could only briefly mention and evaluate the relevant literature on these problems. Because of its purpose, the book was designed not only as an analytical-synthetic survey of pertinent literature but, at the same time, as a practical manual to be used for seeking at least partial answers to practical questions concerning fish transport. The live fish trade is a rapidly expanding component of commercial fishing and aquaculture industries. Proper sanitization of all the equipment and accessories is one of the essential steps for the determination of oxygen uptake of fishes as well as all the other steps of fish transportation in this pandemic of COVID-19.

Flowsheet Based on various experimentations concerning live fish transportation, a flow sheet may be prepared as: Evaluation of the health status of the fishes purchased from the market to be packed for transportation. Serrated operculum and spiny fins, if any (as in Anabas testudineus) is serrated as it damages the packing materials. The trimmed fishes are treated with antibiotics and left for a week for wound healing. In the case of abroad transportation of fish, clearance to the fitness of fishes is made available from a veterinary doctor/inspector. A no-objection certificate is also obtained from the office of the Marine Products Export Organization. Proper sanitization of all the equipment and accessories for the determination of oxygen uptake of fishes as well as all the other steps of fish transportation in this pandemic of COVID-19. Determination of oxygen requirement of the fish in terms of per hour and per unit body weight is essential. In the case of air-breathing fishes to be packed (Like Channa punctatus, Anabas testudineus, Clarias batrachus and Heteropneustes fossilis), determination of aerial and aquatic oxygen requirement of the fishes is essential. The oxygen requirement of oxygen was estimated from the calculated values of intercept (=a) and slope (=b). For this calculation, a relationship of aWb is applied.

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