The fisheries department is looking to restock the Island's population of Nassau Grouper whose numbers are thought to have dropped to dangerously low levels.

Senior fisheries officer Brian Luckhurst writing in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries Bulletin, said Fisheries had been offered an "excellent opportunity'' of restocking the grouper.

Mr. Luckhurst explained the number of fish caught between 1975 and 1981 dropped "precipitously'' and it was feared the fish was thought to be "commercially extinct''.

A commercially extinct fish has numbers so low it would not be economically viable to target for profit.

Mr. Luckhurst said: "With much reduced population density, Nassau groupers appear to have been unable to recover, probably due to the disruption of their reproduction behavioural pattern which requires a higher density of fish to be effective.'' The department has received an offer of 500 fingerlings from Florida's Harbour Branch Oceanographic Institute to replenish local stock.

Females will be captured in the Bahamas and their eggs will be fertilised as they spawn in a laboratory.

The fingerlings will be fed a special diet of grouper pellets before release and will be tagged both externally and internally so they can be monitored.

The local population of the Nassau Grouper is of the same species as that found upstream in the Bahamas and Caribbean.

Fresh water fish stocks have been replenished by this method for years but this would be the first large scale salt water restocking.