Plastic Peril on Species Diversity and Fish Catch: A Zone-wise Comparative Assessment between Ulhas River Estuary and Thane Creek

The anthropogenic activities prevalent in the Ulhas River estuary and the Thane creek were accentuated to correlate with their zone wise plastic pollution with that of existent artisanal fisheries status. The observation revealed that there is rise in plastic peril with increased anthropogenic activities which caused depletion in the fisheries of the ambient water bodies to non-profitable level. This consequently decreased the fishing activities. At 80% Bray-Curtis similarity resemblance in PCO showed that UZ-II, UZIII and TZ-III were similar at 87.7% ordination in fish species abundance whereas UZ-III and TZ-III were similar at 89% ordination in biomass. The pattern of fish catches were in accordance with zone-wise deterioration level due to the impact of plastic peril which revealed direct correlation to that of dwindling status of the fisheries of the ambient water bodies.