Identification of fish species using DNA barcode from Visakhapatnam, east coast of India

Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis), a pelagic fish species found throughout tropical and subtropical regions of the world’s oceans, support commercial and recreational fisheries throughout much of its geographic range. Applications of DNA barcoding tools are emerging in the fields of fish conservation, management aspects such as quota, by-catch monitoring and sustainable fisheries monitoring science. Therefore, in this study, we generated DNA barcodes for fish species found at Visakhapatnam fishing harbour, developed a DNA barcode reference library, and investigated the efficiency of the library for identifying specimens at the species-level and analyzing the presence of cryptic species. Furthermore, we investigated the possible taxonomic misidentification of Tripletail (Lobotes surinamensis).