Fish passage

Category

Barriers to fish screen adoption

By Lucy Stuart November 29, 2023

Fish screens can be a useful tool for irrigators and lifesavers for fish — without fish screens over irrigation pumps, debris and wildlife can be sucked up into pipes that draw water from rivers. This causes fish and other creatures to become trapped and die, which in turn partially or fully blocks the pipes, forcing

The plight of Southern Pygmy Perch and the local efforts for recovery

By Lucy Stuart August 31, 2023

Once used as a common bait fish across the Murray-Darling Basin, the now threatened Southern Pygmy Perch (SPP) has now disappeared from most historically known locations. In NSW there are only three broad locations remaining located nearby the towns of Dalton, Holbrook and Albury. The upper Lachlan drainage near Dalton is the most far-north population

Monitoring and managing fishways – what happens after construction?

By Lucy Stuart August 3, 2023

Some time ago, we published an article about the fishways at the Koondrook and Cohuna weirs that were constructed in late 2021. More recently, we pondered on the development of performance standards for fishways and what a good fishway looks like. Although still in development, the researchers at Arthur Rylah Institute (ARI) have been collecting

What have the recent floods meant for the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth?

By Kate McKenna April 5, 2023

Recent floods flowing down the Murray River have well and truly reached the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Mouth of the Murray. All 593 openings across 5 barrages, which for the last 80 years have controlled flows at the Mouth of the Murray, were fully open over the summer, with freshwater, saltwater, fish and other creatures

Hume Dam photographed from above on a bright sunny day, with a small flow visible.

Attraction flow supporting native fish migration

By Kate McKenna March 27, 2023

‘Flow hydrodynamics’, ‘turbulent kinetic energy’, ‘rheotactic behaviour’ - whilst these terms might not mean much to you, they are essential parts of native fish migration in the Murray-Darling Basin. The Murray-Darling Basin is one of the most regulated river systems in the world, home to over 10,000 barriers preventing fish from migrating. These barriers

The Menindee Main Weir is open in December 2022.

Making the Connection: Providing Temporary Fish Passage at the Menindee Lakes

By Iain Ellis February 3, 2023

Fish Movement Weirs and regulators in rivers and lakes can impede or block the movement of native fish, impacting their ability to migrate and move to suitable feeding or breeding areas. While all fish need to move around to some degree, ‘flow-specialists’ like Golden perch and Silver perch need to move along rivers as part

Developing performance standards for fishways

By Lucy Stuart January 30, 2023

In response to the fragmentation of rivers and streams, fishways have become a popular method of mitigating the impacts of dams and weirs by helping to; facilitate fish movement and migration and create access to habitats. Habitat fragmentation poses a great risk to biodiversity, with riverine fish species particularly vulnerable to human development. Fishways, also

Floods and fish – how can flooding help fish and aquatic ecosystems?

By Kate McKenna September 28, 2022

Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, like many other catchments and basins globally, naturally fluctuates between periods of drought and periods of flooding, and has followed this pattern for more than 100 million years. Over time, its many native species have learnt and adapted to this pattern, so that the natural fluctuations between ‘boom and bust’ are now

To stock or not: the case for Barramundi

By Kate McKenna August 22, 2022

Barramundi (Lates calcarifer - also known as the Asian sea bass or the Giant sea perch) is a commonly angled, native Australian fish. Within Australia, Barramundi can be found along the northern coasts and inland rivers in Queensland, Western Australia, and Northern Territory. Looking globally, Barramundi have also left their mark as an introduced species

Protect first, restore second – doing what we can to look after threatened native fish

By Kate McKenna June 30, 2022

Australian rivers are highly modified. In 2003, scientists were already recording that 97% of the rivers in New South Wales were significantly modified, placing immense strain on local aquatic and ecological communities to survive without their natural flow regimes. Almost 20 years on, this is still largely the case for rivers across NSW and the

New fishway at Toorale already supporting fish migration

By Kate McKenna May 16, 2022

Tucked away in the north-west of New South Wales lies the Toorale National Park and State Conservation Area, a culturally and ecologically significant site. At the confluence of two ecologically significant rivers for the Murray Darling Basin, the Warrego and the Darling Rivers, the Toorale National Park and State Conservation Area were jointly purchased by

Native fish and silver screens – let’s keep our fish in the rivers

By Braeden Lampard August 12, 2021

Australia’s inland rivers used to teem with native fish. Speak to any older Australian from…