International Journal of Applied Science and Engineering Research

The diversified area covered over by large number of lotic and lentic waters, the annual fish yield is considerably low. This is due to our dependence only on the capture fishery, lack of scientific attention towards the culture fishery and most important is the effect of pollution, which is causing decline in the fishery of this region. One of the pre-requisites of the fishery science is to have comprehensive knowledge of the fish fauna of the area. However, some scientific contributions to Indian fishes were made in the 19^th century by Hamilton (1822) who described 269 freshwater species from the river Ganga and its tributaries. Day (1878) reported 1418 species, both marine and freshwater from India, Burma and Srilanka. Hora (1921a,b, 1925, 1930, 1936a,b,c, 1937a,b,c, 1939a,b) published some valuable revisionary studies under various heading such as ‘Siluroid fishes of India’, ‘Game fishes of India’ etc. Mishra (1947, 1952, 1953, 1962) published a series of checklists and aids for the identification of fishes of India, Burma and Srilanka. Jhingran (1991) listed 1475 marine and freshwater species of India. Beavan (1982) enlisted 409 fish species of freshwaters of India. Datta Munshi and Srivastava (1988) described 107 species of freshwater fishes belonging to 66 genera, 27 families and 10 orders. Talwar and Jhingran (1991) enlisted 932 fish species of India and adjacent countries belonging to 255 genera, 19 orders and 95 families. Jayaram (1999) described 852 fish species belonging to 272 genera, 16 orders and 71 families. Many workers have published the faunal reports from Himachal Pradesh (McClelland, 1842; Prashad, 1919; Hora, 1927, 1950; Menon, 1951, 1954, 1962; Bhatnagar, 1966, 1973; Sehgal, 1973, Tandon and Sharma, 1976; Tilak and Hussain, 1977; Sharma and Tandon, 1990; Johal, 1998; Negi, 2005), and Punjab (Dunford, 1911; Dhingra and Vasisht, 1967; Tandon and Rishi, 1966, 1967; Tandon and Johal, 1972; Tandon and Gupta, 1975; Tandon and Singh, 1980; Johal and Tandon, 1981; Ladher et al., 1994, Brraich et al., 2003). The fish fauna of the Pong Dam Reservoir and Harike wetland are not yet explored much. This is an effort to document the fish fauna of this region.