Reply With QuoteGreat initiative there.
Hope it gets off the ground.
A good location would be inside each of the greenzones the government imposed in the last decade.
Just a heads up to let everyone know about an exciting national initiative, aiming to protect and restore shellfish reefs in Australian estuaries, that is being launched under the National Environmental Science Program.
Shellfish (oysters, mussels etc) are ecosystem engineers that form the "lungs" of healthy estuaries by providing filtration of the water, uptake of nutrients, stabilising shorelines and food and shelter for fish and crabs. Reefs of shellfish used to be abundant in estuaries around Australia, however, they have mostly been lost since European settlement, due mainly to declining water quality, and historic overfishing. Their loss has lead to flow on issues leading to problems with reduced fisheries productivity and less healthy estuaries.
Overseas experience has shown restoration of living shellfish reefs to be much more effective than artificial reefs for improving water quality and fisheries productivity. Because of this, Australia's first shellfish reef restoration project has recently started in Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne, in a collaboration between fishing clubs, fisheries scientists and environmental groups http://www.natureaustralia.org.au/20...es-lost-reefs/
In Moreton Bay, the Pumicestone Passage Fish Stocking Association in conjunction with Sunfish Nth Moreton, Indigenous groups, local scientists and catchment management authorities are all pushing for a similar pilot reef restoration project in Pumicestone Passage. See http://restorepumicestonepassage.org/ for more information. Other similar projects are also now being planned in NSW, SA and WA using recreational fishing monies originally intended for fish habitat, artificial reefs and so on. In QLD, funding has been harder to come by to date, but we hope that this will change once decision makers realise there is potential to reap the same environmental, social and economic benefits that have accrued from similar projects overseas.
A national estuary restoration website is being developed to link all of these projects together and will be live soon, providing a one stop information portal for anglers who would like to know more about what is being done in their local area (perhaps you or your club or group might even be thinking of contributing time to reef development in your area ??). I'll provide the link to the new website once its up and running. Until then I encourage all anglers to read up on the information from the existing websites listed above so they can better understand what we've lost from our estuaries, and what we can do to try to get some of that magic back...
Great initiative there.
Hope it gets off the ground.
A good location would be inside each of the greenzones the government imposed in the last decade.
Jack.
An even better place would be outside them, in the yellow zones, so people can fish on them and we can monitor (hopefully greatly increased) catch rates. The only thing that would probably not be allowed would be anchoring, which would damage or turn over the reef substrates, and of course removal of the shellfish from the reef itself. The whole idea is to regenerate reefs that filter the water and provide more fish at the same time. Win/ win.Originally Posted by tunaticer
Pumicestone passage fish stocking association? Like to hear more about that.
No good restocking fish when the habitat is not there to support them. That is why its better to work on habitat restoration - much more bang for your buck... The Pumicestone Passage Fish Stocking Association is right behind the reef restoration concept for this reason. Repair the habitat and the fish will follow.
I've just never heard of a saltwater stocking group getting approval from Fisheries, they are totally @nal about it.
Be good if they have changed their stance.
Plenty of good reasons why they would have that stance - for some information on this, check out
http://www.stockenhancement.org/vide...e_approach.pdf
There are plenty of ways to get it wrong, and hard to put the genie back into the bottle once its out. Habitat is a much better bet, much safer, environmentally positive, better bang for the buck.
Back when I was a kid when it rained, the rain would take ages to get to the river because it would meander through clogged waterways. This resulted in a slow percolation of fresh water into the salt. Now with all the guttering and stormwater drains it is dumped straight into the river massively diluting it. How much damage does this cause? The other thing with this when I was a kid you might see a few cars a day but now thousand upon thousands. All the pollution whether it be oil, or gasses or road rubber is dumped into the environment. Is it any wonder our seagrass sea beds are weak and sickly looking. I used to drive a backhoe on the road and used to hate the beginning of a storm because of all the shite would be flicked up on to me.
Back when I was a kid I remembered the river clearing on neap tides. Norman Creek was so clear you could see all the junk on the bottom. When do you ever see it clear in the mid reaches? I used to dredge for sand in the river and sometimes maybe too close to the banks which released a lot of sediment into the water but now what is the excuse for our dirty river? I was up in the gulf and the otter boards would stir up the bottom so you could see a trail of mud for long way back. The bottom is damaged by trawling and then the fish that is pushed over the side in the shit tubes are severly damaged and traumatised. We could start banning trawlers out of the bay if we are going to be serious. Recreational fishing can do minimal damage and is probably more beneficial for the long term good of the bay. I think that a lot more has to be done before you can start talking about reseeding mussels and oysters. I wish you the best what ever happens.
Thanks for that Sharkymark2. Certainly landbased development and sewage disposal etc. is the biggest problem in the Bay, but the catchment management groups are trying to work through those issues with various projects. Having said that, all that fun is happening on the land and nothing direct is being done in the water, where fishers might actually benefit. Pumicestone Passage is already closed to commercial fishing, and has a relatively small catchment, so the community up here thinks its well worth trialling because if we don't try some active intervention on the water, things will just continue to get worse at an accelerating rate. And half of the process is by doing so, the wider community learns more about our waterways, and if they know more about the threatening mechanisms that are occurring, they might even be less likely to blame fishers for the decline. So nothing to lose and everything to gain by attempting shellfish reef restoration, IMHO.
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