Black Mouth Croaker a new target for commercial exploitation in offshore waters of the Oman Sea

Since year 2010, in conformity with exploit from unexploited resources of lanternfishes in the northwest Oman Sea, a new resource of Black Mouth Croaker (Atrobucca nibe ) was found as a new target for commercial fishery. The trial fishing of myctophids was started with two industrial vessels accompany with two main bycatches of ribbonfishes and black mouth croaker. The fishing area restricted to the longitude 57° 00' E to 57° 20' E in depths of 180-250 m. In further these two bycatches found high economic importance mainly ribbonfishes that at present has high value for export. In the beginning, it was assumed that the croaker is the dominant species of Big-eye Croaker (Penahhia anea). But Atrobucca nibe is distributed up to deeper waters up to 250 m and is completely separate species and is introduced from this area for the first time. Results showed the main distribution of black-mouth croaker concentrated on the continental slope in 200 m depth, but these stocks move to deeper waters ( more than 200m) in warm season and extend to shallow waters (less than 200m) in winter.