Indian oil sardine

A true sardine of the family Clupeidae and one of the most-eaten sardines on Earth — the mainstay of India's Malabar-coast fishery — yet a fish that almost never meets a can.

About the fish

• One of the planet's biggest sardine fisheries: Indian oil-sardine landings peaked around 390,000 tonnes in 2012 (CMFRI landings data), driven overwhelmingly by the Malabar coast.
• A warm-water cousin of the European sardine (Sardina pilchardus): oilier in season, softer-fleshed, and moving in enormous, famously unpredictable schools.
• Landings swing between boom and bust decades, tied to monsoon strength and plankton blooms — volatility that has always undermined cannery economics on the Malabar coast.
• Almost never canned: India's catch is eaten fresh the same day (beach auctions at dawn, curries by evening) or preserved by sun-drying, salting and, in the modern era, retort-pouch curries — so Western-style tins of Sardinella longiceps are genuine rarities.
• An increasing share of bulk landings is diverted to fishmeal for farmed shrimp and poultry, a decade-long controversy among Indian marine researchers as local prices climb in lean years.

Brands using Indian oil sardine in this directory

No brands in the directory are confidently recorded using this species yet.