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Riparian Zones

Nothing gets us more excited than watching fish stir under the surface in pursuit of the insects that live among the native trees.

Riparian areas play an incredibly important role when it comes to filtering the water entering our waterways. Not only this, a whopping 40% of a fish’s diet can come from land-based insect fall from the riparian zone.

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Snags

Snags are important for all aquatic life in our river systems, especially for native fish.

Snags provide critical breeding sites, shelter and protection from predators, a place to rest, ambush sites and feeding grounds for fish that like to eat algae and macro-invertebrates that accumulate on woody debris. Snags also play an important role in the physical shaping of Australian rivers, creating variability in depth and flow which our native fish rely on.

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Pest Fish

In Australia, we are blessed with the number of species we can target. Unfortunately, not all of these fish are welcome and at times pose a serious risk to the survival of our native fish. As stewards of our waterways, it is our responsibility to identify these issues and know what to if you catch one of these fish when you’re out on the water. This project has been assisted by the New South Wales Government through its Environment Trust.

Seagrass meadows

Seagrass bed can be found in the shallow water in bays, estuaries and shallow coastal waters in New South Wales. Seagrasses have highly diverse and productive habitats that directly and indirectly support many coastal fisheries.

Loads of our favourite fish species rely on seagrasses for at least some part of their life cycle including luderick, bream, snapper, sea mullet and leatherjackets.

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Mangrove Forests

Mangroves are a group of trees that can survive the extreme conditions we see in the intertidal areas.  They are adapted to the rise and fall of the tide and the extreme concentrations of salt that come with these areas.

Mangroves are natural defenders for coastal areas. They help break down storm waves for coastlines, and also help filter out the water and all the nasties that run-off our urban environments during wet weather.

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Flow

When we talk about river flow, we are talking about the water in or flowing through our river systems.  

Australia’s rivers and creeks are generally characterised by the low and variable flow. If you think about our weather patterns of flood and drought, Australia often experiences long dry spells with little or no rainfall, punctuated by flooding. Our rivers and everything in them has adapted to their own unique wetting, drying and flow cycles.  

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Coral Reefs

Coral reefs are underwater ecosystems made up of minuscule sessile (non-mobile) animals. From a distance, coral looks like mossy rock or bone, but up close it appears to be covered in tiny flowers.

Coral reefs are important habitat to the thousands of fish and other marine life both in and around the coral reef habitat. Reefs provide habitat structure for fish that protects them from strong ocean currents and provides a smorgasbord of food for our fish.

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Shellfish reefs

Shellfish reefs are the complex/ living structures of shellfish you see growing in intertidal and upper subtidal regions of bays, estuaries and nearshore waters.

They are basically fish production factories kickstarting the food chain and filtering water.  For every hectare of oyster reef, each year, the reefs can filter 2.7 billion litres of seawater, remove 225 kilograms of nitrogen and phosphate, produce 375kg more fish and provide new homes for over 100 different marine species.

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Saltmarsh

The saltmarshes usually occur behind the mangroves and get inundated with water during the lunar high tides. Saltmarsh habitat contains a specialised community of plants which includes sedges, rushes, reeds, grasses, succulent herbs and low shrubs.

Recent research has found that saltmarshes make up a disproportionately high contribution to fish diets compared to other estuarine habitats. Saltmarshes provide shelter and food for fish, especially smaller fish and juveniles

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