TEHRAN (SHILNA) – Bonefish catch season in the Caspian Sea will officially start on October 12, general director of Mazandaran Fisheries said.

Habib-Nejad, by announcing this, added that based on resolutions of High Commission for Bony Fish of the Caspian Sea, 52 cooperatives with 4,000 members will start catching fish in coastal areas of this province from October 12, 2006. He added “In this year’s fishing season, we are using all expertise to hold technical workshops and extension services for Board of Directors of these beach net cooperatives.”

Habib-Nejad said: “We are making efforts to introduce standard fishing gears and better management practices to fishermen to conserve valuable resources of bony fish in the Caspian Sea. We thank all the fishermen for respecting fishing regulations such as standard mesh size and shooting time and place besides using standard fishing gears.

“In the last fishing season, we collected some 8300 MT of bony fish which showed a 50 percent of growth comparing to last year statistics. This amount of increase was due to respecting the fishing laws by beach net cooperatives in the province and excessive efforts of responsible fishing by Mazandaran Province Fisheries General Directorate”.