A Survey (2010) of Fish Population in a Disused Mining Pool near the UPM Swimming Pool at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor

Kamaruddin, I.S. and A.S. Mustafa Kamal, (2010). A survey (2010) of fish population in a disused mining pool near the UPM swimming pool at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor. Agriculture Extension (AGREX’10). Universiti Putra Malaysia. 354-359.

A Survey (2010) of Fish Population in a Disused Mining Pool near the UPM Swimming Pool at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor

Kamaruddin, I.S. and A.S. Mustafa Kamal*

Department of Aquaculture, Faculty of Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia

*Corresponding author: akuakultur_upm@hotmail.com

Abstract

A survey of fish population was carried out in a disused mining pool which located near to Universiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM) swimming pool at UPM Serdang, Selangor. This pool was named as Swimming Pool Pond (SP Pond). Fish sampling was conducted in March 2010 by using gill nets with a mesh size of 6.35 cm, at three sampling stations which designated as station A, station B and station C. These nets were set at dusk and hauled in the next morning and a total of 36 individual fishes from 6 species were captured from the survey. The fish population was comprises of Osteochilus hasselti (Terbol) (36.1%), Notopterus notopterus (Belida) (27.8%), Cyclocheilichthys apogon (Temperas) (25.0%), Channa micropeltes (Toman) (5.6%), Hemibagrus nemurus (Baung) (2.8%) and Oreochromis mossambicus (Tilapia) (2.8%). The fish diversity indices obtained from this survey shows that the Shannon-Weaver index value was 1.43, Pielou’s evenness index value was 0.80 and Margalef’s species richness index value was 3.21.  Results  obtained from this survey might be useful  in pond management especially  for fish re-stocking programmes, in which the latest technology or methods in hatcheries would be involved  to prepare the juvenile or adult fish  into fish stock.

Keywords: Fish population, disused mining pool, tin-mining pool, Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Introduction

The freshwater habitat is part of Malaysia’s vast aquatic ecosystem and consists of both natural and man-made water bodies (Muhamad-Nasir and Gopinath, 2006). One of the man-made water bodies in Malaysia is disused tin-mining pool. The practice of open-cast and pit mining for tin has left large tracts of land with pools of immense depths sometimes covering areas of more than 50 ha (Yusof et al., 2001). According to Arumugam (1994), Malaysia has about 4,300 disused mining pools and this area covering about 16,440 ha.

Malaysia aggressively reclaimed most of their disused tin-mining pool especially for agricultural activities, freshwater fish farming  area,  recreational  area,  houses  area  and  even as  an  industrial  area (Muhamad-Samudi, 2008). Considering the valuable potential of water pools, a study to document the use of water pools to become more productive area and give direct benefit to the local people need to be conducted (Ningsih, 2008).

In fact, disused mining pool in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) should be preserved and well managed in a sustainable ways. This is because this man-made water bodies might be useful in terms of research on its ecology and fisheries resources. Swimming Pool Pond (SP Pond) in UPM is one of the ponds that have been abandoned in the university area due to previous tin mining activities.  A study regarding the fish fauna in this pond have been done previously by Muhammad-Shukri (2007), but the latest information of the fish fauna in this area is still lacking.  

As such, this survey was conducted to update the current situation of fish species that constitute the fish population in SP Pond. Results obtained from this survey might be useful in pond management especially for fish re-stocking programmes, in which the latest technology or methods in hatcheries would be involved to prepare the juvenile or adult fish into fish stock.

Materials and Methods

This survey was conducted in a disused mining pool near to Universiti Putra Malaysia swimming pool. This pond was formerly a tin mining pool (Muhammad-Shukri, 2007). It does not have any officially designated named, as such, for this survey it was named as Swimming Pool Pond (SP Pond). This pond located in the university area and it lies at latitude 4° 41’ north and longitude 102° 40’ east and the area of this pond is about 17,500 m².

The survey was conducted in the month of March 2010. Three stations were set up as sampling stations named as station A, station B and station C (Figure 1). Fishes were sampled from each station by using gillnets with mesh size of 6.35 cm (2.5 inches).  The gillnets were set at dusk and hauled in the next morning. All fishes caught were identified for their species by using standard taxonomic keys and the numbers of individual for every species were counted. In this survey, fish species diversity was measured  with Shannon-Weaver Index (1963), while the species evenness and richness  were measured by using Pielou’s Evenness Index (1969) andMargalef’s Index (1958) respectively.

Results and Discussion

A total of 36 fish individuals comprised of 6 species from 5 families were recorded during this survey. Fish population in SP Pond was dominated by Osteochilus hasselti with 13 individual fish comprising 36.1% from the total fish caught. Then the statistic count was followed by Notopterus notopterus (27.8%), Cyclocheilichthys apogon (25.0%), Channa micropeltes (5.6%), Hemibagrus nemurus (2.8%) and Oreochromis mossambicus (2.8%) (Table 1).

Compared to the previous study by Muhammad-Shukri (2007), also 6 species of fish were caught in SP Pond but some of the fish species caught were different from the species caught in this current survey (Table 2). 70% from the total fish caught in the previous study was Oreochromis sp.,  whereas in the current survey, only 1 individual Oreochromis sp fish sample was found. The difference found between the two studies in terms of species type  and the dominant species, might be due to the different mesh size of gill nets that being used in both sampling. 

In this survey, Osteochilus hasselti was found as the most abundance fish species inhabiting in SP Pond. Indeed, O. hasselti is the most common and widely distributed fish species in Malaysia. They can be found mainly in streams, ponds, mining pools, and irrigation canals which are available throughout the length and breadth of Malaysia (Mohsin and Ambak, 1983). The dominance of O. hasselti was also recorded by Smith (1945) in Mekong River and they were also found in other parts of the Indochinese Peninsula  as well as the Greater Sunda Islands (Magtoon and Arai, 1990).

Next, N. notopterus was recorded as second highest in proportion (27.8%) with 10 individual after O. hasselti. This finding was the same as the record by Muhammad-Shukri (2007) that the knifefish in SP Pond has the second highest composition representing 13.0% from the total fish caught. There was another study by Kamaruddin and Mustafa Kamal (2010) which also found that N. notopterus was the dominant in swamp area of Faculty of Engineering, UPM. Based on all these data obtained, it can be concluded that N. Notopterus is abundance in water bodies of UPM area. 

Besides, there were two predatory fish species, Channa micropeltes (2 individuals=5.6%) and Hemibagrus nemurus (1 individual=2.8%), had been recorded with lower percentage composition compared to the other species captured. As in previous study done by Muhammad-Shukri (2007), the results were also similar where C. micropeltes and H. nemurus were caught with 6.0% and 5.0% respectively. These show that the number of predatory fish species in SP Pond was rather low when compared to the omnivore and herbivore fish species. The carnivores are flesh-eating consumers; they include several trophic levels from the third on up (Spellman, 2008). From here, we could predict that the food web for fish population in this survey area is stable with low percentage of fish species that constitute on the top of the pyramid. Energy pyramids must always be larger at the base than at the top (Spellman, 2008).

The fish diversity indices obtained from this survey were Shannon-Weaver index value 1.43, Pielou’s evenness index value 0.80 and Margalef’s species richness index value 3.21 (Table 3). The value of the index is similar with the results of study done by Kamaruddin et al. (2009) in Tasik Kenyir where the Shannon-Weaver index, Pielou’s evenness index and Margalef’s species richness index values were 1.54, 0.70 and 2.02 respectively. This similarity might be due to that these two water bodies were man-made, lacustrine and lentic water bodies where it is deep and it has three ecological zones including the profundal zone.

Conclusion

Based on the data obtained, it can be concluded that the Swimming Pool Pond (SP Pond) was dominated by Osteochilus hasseltiand then followed by Notopterus notopterus, Cyclocheilichthys apogon, Channa micropeltes, Hemibagrus nemurus and Oreochromis mossambicus. The fish species found in this survey showed slightly different when compared to the previous study. The lower percentage of predatory species compared to herbivore and omnivore fish species as a whole had shown that the food web in this man-made water body is stabled. The fish diversity indices such as the Shannon-Weaver index (value of 1.43), Pielou’s evenness index (value of 0.80) and Margalef’s species richness index (value of 3.21) obtained from this survey could be used to compare with other studies. Sustainable managements practice should be stressed out in managing the SP Pond so that it could benefit the community in terms of ecological and fisheries research.

 Tables

Table 1: Table showing the list of fish species caught during the survey in SP Pond in March 2010.

Fish species	Family	Common name	Number of individual	Percentage (%)
Osteochilus hasselti Notopterus notopterus Cyclocheilichthys apogon Channa micropeltes Hemibagrus nemurus Oreochromis  mossambicus	Cyprinidae Notopteridae Cyprinidae Ophicephalidae Bagridae Cichlidae	Terbol Belida Temperas Toman Baung Tilapia	13 10 9 2 1 1	36.1 27.8 25.00 5.6 2.8 2.8
Total			36	100

Table 2: Different fish species captured in SP Pond according to study done by Muhammad-Shukri (2007) and the current survey.

Fish species	Muhammad-Shukri (2007)	Current Survey (2010)
Osteochilus hasselti Notopterus notopterus Cyclocheilichthys apogon Channa micropeltes Hemibagrus nemurus Oreochromis sp. Oxyeleotris marmorata Hypostomus plecostomus	– + – + + + + +	+ + + + + + – –

+ Present  

– Absent

Table 3: Table showing the fish diversity indices for fish population in SP Pond during the survey in March 2010. 

Fish Diversity Indices	Value
Shannon-Weaver index Pielou’s evenness index Margalef’s species richness index	1.43 0.80 3.21

References

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 For the slide presentation, please refer to the link below: 
http://www.apeec.upm.edu.my/agrex10/moreinfo.html