Habitat Champions helping OzFish bring fish back to more places
If you’re an OzFish Habitat Champion, you’ve put your hand in your pocket and supported us to bring fish habitat innovation to more places, more often. This time, we’ve expanded our Seagrass for Snapper program into Queensland! You’ve seen our success with Seagrass for Snapper in Western Australia and the benefits provided to Pink Snapper, now watch as we bring the same benefits to a range of tropical snapper too.
In Queensland, Pink Snapper are reliably found from the NSW border north to Gladstone, with the odd one turning up each season as far north as Townsville. In the tropical reaches of Queensland’s Coast, Seagrass for Snapper takes on a new meaning: a number of Tropical Lutjanid Snapper form key recreational and commercial fisheries, including Golden Snapper (Lutjanus johnii), Saddletail Snapper (Lutjanus malabaricus) and Crimson Snapper (Lutjanus erythropterus). Although not closely related to the ‘traditional’ snapper of southern waters, they are just as highly revered as sportfish and for their eating qualities. Much like their southern namesake, these tropical Snapper also inhabit estuaries and bays as juveniles, and Seagrass forms crucial nursery habitat for these species.
We are dreaming of fish and ensuring fish dreaming is considered in all of our OzFish programs. Snapper are culturally significant to First Nations groups throughout the country, both as a resource and as a spiritual emblem. In Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the town and beach of Mooloolaba is derived from Mulu, the Kabi Kabi word for Snapper.
Anglers generally associate snapper fishing with inshore and offshore reefs, dropping baits or jigs into water anywhere from 20m to 250m deep, but it’s in the estuaries and shallow bays where these fish start their lives. In their larval stage, Snapper settle within coastal estuaries and show a particular preference for areas with healthy seagrass beds. Seagrass beds are the most important nursery habitat for Snapper, providing them shelter from predators while also allowing them to forage on other animals that call Seagrass home (such as crabs, squid and other species of fish).
OzFish’s Project Manager for South and Central Queensland, Kaidon Anderson said,
“Seagrass is also talented at providing a number of other important ecological functions, including contributing to fisheries productivity, marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration”.
The bad news is, thousands of square kilometres of seagrass have been lost throughout the country, largely due to decreased water quality, pollution and changes to hydrology. OzFish’s Seagrass for Snapper program is working around the country to restore this key habitat component for fish.
Kaidon says, “We need recreational fishers to get out there collecting seagrass and re-deploying it through our processes, this sort of restoration can only be achieved at the scale we need with many many hands”.
OzFish has successfully trialled tropical Seagrass restoration in North Queensland, and we’re now starting to extend our work all the way along the Queensland Coast, with restoration sites proposed for Airlie Beach, Rockhampton (Konomie Island), Gladstone Harbour (Pelican Banks) and Burrum Heads. Restoration work will be community-driven, with recreational fishing collecting Seagrass rhizomes and seeds and dispersing them in areas that are ideal for restoration, helping to bring Seagrass back to key areas where it has been lost.
To all of our Habitat Champions we say ‘Thank you and the fish thank you too’. In conjunction with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and BCF, OzFish Chapters and team will drive this restoration program and bring thriving seagrass beds back to the Queensland coast. This will allow all future generations of Queenslanders to enjoy Snapper (of all species!).
If you’d like to become a Habitat Champion, get in touch with OzFish’s Director of Fundraising & Sponsorship, Tim Davenport via timdavenport@ozfish.org.au
If you’d like to stay in touch with OzFish’s work in Queensland, join any of our Qld Chapters.
