Hugli Matla Estuary, West Bengal
Contents: 1. A faunal appraisal of Hugli-Matla Estuarine Complex/N.V. Subba Rao. 2. Medusae : Cnidaria/Badri Prasad Haldar and Amalesh Choudhury. 3. Echiura and Sipuncula/Badri Prasad Haldar. 4. Molluscs/N.V. Subba Rao, A. Dey and S. Barua. 5. Polychaetes/A. Misra. 6. The structure and dynamics of planktonic copepods/Rashid A. Khan. 7. Stomatopoda : Crustacea/H.C. Ghosh. 8. Isopoda : Crustacea/S.S. Ghatak. 9. Hermit Crabs (Crustacea : Decapoda)/K. Narapu Reddy. 10. Crustacea : Xanthidae/Maya Deb. 11. Crustacea : Decapoda : Grapsidae/Sunil Kumar Ghosh. 12. Portunidae : Decapoda : Crustacea/Sipra Bhadra. 13. Ocypodidae : Decapoda : Crustacea/N. Bairagi. 14. Prawns and Shrimps (Crustacea : Decapoda)/K. Narapu Reddy. 15. Spider/B.K. Biswas. 16. Chaetognatha/Badri Prasad Haldar. 17. Asteroidea, Ophiuroidea and Ehinoidea (Echinodermata)/D.R.K. Sastry. 18. Holothuroidea : Echinodermata/S.K. Mukhopadhyaya. 19. Intertidal fishes/P. Mukherjee. 20. Anura : Amphibia/S.K. Chanda. 21. Reptilia/D.P. Sanyal, B. Dattagupta and S. Sur. 22. Ecology of the Hugli-Matla Estuarine system/A. Rashid Khan. 23. Ecology of Kulti Estuary with reference to discharge of Calcutta Metropolitan Sewage/A. Rashid Khan. 24. The pollution problem of Hugli Estuarine system/A. Rashid Khan.
From the foreword by A.K. Ghosh, Director, Zoological Survey of India: "The Hugli-Matla estuary was one of the earliest area of investigation by the founder-director of Zoological Survey of India, Dr. Thomas Nelson Annandale. The studies carried out in early part of this century has remained a pioneering work in this largest estuarine ecosystem in India. Scientists of ZSI have once again paid deserving attention to this unique productive and dynamic system which undoubtedly has undergone changes due to unprecedented human activities in the region. The results of this five year long study (1984-1989) updated and now presented in the present volume would provide a most comprehensive profile of biotic resources of this system, their diversity, changes. As many as 1498 species out of 1,26,000 species of plants and animals recorded from India find place in the estuarine system; some groups of aquatic fauna from the major components i.e. Crustacea (182 species), Insecta (162 species), fishes (156 species), Mollusca (130 species) dominate the system. It is well known that Hugli-Matla estuary plays a significant role in economy of Southern Bengal specially both for fin-fishes and shell fisheries activities. These resources particularly dealt in this present document would help the management authorities for designing an appropriate management strategy."
