Agricultural Sciences, 2014, 5, 813-821 Published Online August 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/as http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/as.2014.510086 How to cite this paper: Singh, A.K., Ansari, A., Srivastava, S.C., Verma, P. and Pathak, A.K. (2014) Impacts of Invasive Fishes on Fishery Dynamics of the Yamuna River, India. Agricultural Sciences, 5, 813-821. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/as.2014.510086 Impacts of Invasive Fishes on Fishery Dynamics of the Yamuna River, India Atul K. Singh * , Abubakar Ansari, Sharad C. Srivastava, Pankaj Verma, A. K. Pathak Exotic Fish Germplasm Section of Fish Health Management Division, National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, Lucknow, India Email: * aksingh56@rediffmail.com Received 16 May 2014; revised 30 June 2014; accepted 30 July 2014 Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Invasion, spread and predominance of alien invasive fishes were studied in 950-km-long stretch of the Yamuna River. The fish yield ranged between 32 t/km/yr to 240 t/km/yr and the catch of alien invasive fishes dominated over local fishes in the fishery, which was over 96% at Etawah. The cal- culated Invasion Coefficient Index (I xi ) of alien invasive fishes was in the range of 0.12 to 0.31 in- dicating a major loss to the local fish diversity. The calculated Pearson’s correlation coefficient was found to have positive correlation of 0.757 and 0.710 for common carp and tilapia respectively with locally captured Indian major carps (IMC). The results of this study highlighted how uninten- tional spread of alien invasive fishes due to rapid aquaculture diversification and intensification has invaded into the Yamuna River causing severe loss to the local fishery. The invasion of alien fishes has been mapped for the Yamuna River at different locations using GIS tools. The results of this study invite attention on the management and sustainability of the local fishery and ecosys- tem health of the river. Keywords Alien Invasive Fishes, Invasion, Fish Yield, Local Fish Diversity, Invasion Coefficient Index, Yamuna River 1. Introduction Introductions of alien fish species are an important part of human activities concerning aquatic ecosystems [1]. In India, over 300 alien fish species including 291 ornamental species, 31 aquaculture species and 3 larvicidal fishes are recorded [2]. These introductions are human-mediated and, may be intentional or unintentional. Both * Corresponding author.