With the help of recreational fishers, OzFish is working to restore seagrass habitat in Cockburn Sound, Western Australia.
Each year hundreds of recreational fishers, divers and community members in Western Australia take part in the Seeds For Snapper project to restore the lost seagrass of Cockburn Sound.
Once dubbed ‘Kakadu of the South’ for its abundant wildlife, the Tuckean was an engine room for fisheries productivity throughout Northern NSW. Unfortunately, we now know that the modifications to the hydrology of the swamp, largely through floodplain drainage infrastructure, has resulted in poor water quality across it’s floodplain. Resulting in the associated loss of environmental values and despite previous attempts, only small-scale improvements have occurred, poor water quality still occurs regularly, and previous ecosystem values remain diminished.
OzFish are working together with the local community to collect seagrass in Lake Macquarie and restore the lost ecosystem. These shoots can become naturally detached from the meadow and can be found floating or washed ashore after storms, winds and big tides.
Working in collaboration with DWER and UWA, OzFish will soon begin Seagrass for Swimmers, a new Halophila ovalis seagrass restoration trial in Leschenault Estuary. This project will form part of Leschenault Catchment Council’s Leschenault Estuary Connect program, an innovative program aimed at connecting and engaging the local community to protect and enhance the Leschenault Estuary for future generations.
OzFish Volunteers have cleared weeds along the Coomera River at Barrs Scrub and have planted 1,250 plants, ensuring this important habitat will be healthy for generations of fish and fishers.
Queensland Tropical Seagrass Restoration aims to establish a coordinated volunteer seagrass restoration program spanning from Gladstone to Cairns in eastern Queensland. It will also enhance community and Traditional Owner capabilities to expand seagrass restoration efforts across the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is being trialled to assess fish diversity in tropical waterways. We are working with our project partners to develop monitoring techniques using eDNA as an alternative to traditional fish sampling methods, such as netting or trapping, as they are not always easy or appropriate.
The Curdies River and estuary is a destination waterway for angling species such as Black Bream and Estuary Perch in south-west Victoria. Being an intermittent estuary, the mouth where the estuary meets the ocean at Peterborough on the Great Ocean Road, can be closed to the ocean by sand build-up for long periods of time.
OzFish volunteers and members of the local community set out to take steps to begin the return of thriving shellfish reefs to the Port River estuary. This built on previous successful trials by the Estuary Care Foundation to return native flat oysters to the waterway.
This citizen science project aims to better understand the flow-on benefits of habitat restoration for fish and recreational fishers at Burrill Lake.
Coffs Harbour OzFish volunteers have been mapping the Bellinger River, where many of the local fishermen have caught their first bream near Bellingen NSW.
OzFish volunteers have spent hours undertaking mapping for a range of fish habitat types including snags, seagrass, shellfish reefs.
The Swan-Canning black bream population are set to get a boost, with a new project set to increase numbers of one of their favourite food sources: the black pygmy mussel. Black pygmy mussels are a crucial food source for bream and when their diet is rich in this specific shellfish it leads to bigger, stronger, healthier populations of this famous Australian fish that recreational anglers love to catch. By restoring these valuable mussel beds, a more complex and robust aquatic habitat will be created which will result in greater black bream stocks.
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