With an ocean area that covers 2/3 of the entire territory of Indonesia, there are extraordinary natural resources. One of them is in the form of marine resources, which in Indonesia itself, is the highest source of fish and mining materials.
Marine resources in the form of fish in Indonesia are quite diverse, both fish with economic potential and not with economic potential.
Types of fish that have high economic and nutritional potential are pelagic and demersal fish.
- Pelagic fish
Pelagic fish are a group of fish that are located on the surface layer to the water column and have a main characteristic, which is in their activities always forming schools (schooling) and migrating for various necessities of life.
Based on their size, pelagic fish are divided into two, namely:
- Large pelagic fish, such as tuna, skipjack, tuna, and others.
- Small pelagic fish, such as scad fish, anchovies, mackerel, and others.
Pelagic fish are usually referred to as oily fish. This is because fish in the pelagic group contain up to 30 percent oil in their body tissues and in the abdominal cavity.
Pelagic fish that contain lots of oil, such as mackerel, marlin, wahoo, tuna, sardines, barracuda, and others.
Small pelagic fish usually live on the reef and move from place to place. Caught with catching tools in the form of nets, such as gill nets, ring nets, ring seines, and others.
- Demersal Fish
The word demersal itself comes from the Latin “demergere” which means to sink. Demersal fish is a type of fish whose habitat is at the bottom of the waters,
it can also be said that demersal fish are fish caught with basic fishing gear such as bottom trawls, bottom gillnets, long raw gillnets ), bubu and so on.
Demersal fish live and feed on the ocean floor, such as mud, sand, and rocks. Demersal fish rarely appear on coral reefs and be easily found from the coast to the deep sea zone.
In contrast to pelagic fish, demersal fish contain very little oil or 1-4 percent of their body mass. So demersal fish including white meat fish.
Examples of demersal fish include red snapper or bambangan, peperek, kurisi, kuniran, pomfret, grouper and others. Demersal fish usually live alone. Various types of demersal fish are caught commercially and as fishing targets.
Grouper is one of the commercial species that is in great demand.
