Better Habitat, Better Fishing

Water is an important part of the Burdekin’s identity, so it’s important to ensure that the health of the waterways is well maintained for generations of fish and fishers to come.

OzFish is a not-for-profit community organisation made up of members of the recreational fishing community collaborating with other organisations and fishers to improve fish habitat.

The organisation’s North Queensland Chapter incorporates waterways in Townsville, the Burdekin and Ingham and has a variety of ongoing projects with the help of local volunteers.

“We predominantly operate in the freshwater and the estuaries, so I’m usually working in the wetlands, the creeks, sometimes in the mangroves,” said OzFish Senior Project Manager North Queensland Dr Geoff Collins.

Dr Collins leads two projects in the Burdekin region, firstly by working with Lower Burdekin Water to monitor their fishways.

A fishway is a construction often made of concrete and rocks to simulate a stream allowing fish to migrate up a system.

“The fishways are important for opening up more habitat upstream so the fish can access more habitat which will basically help to increase their overall capacity in the system and increase the species’ richness in the systems,” said Dr Collins.

“The oldest one in the Burdekin is just north of Brandon straight opposite the mill, that was the first one ever built, but there’s quite a few others now.”

The second major project in the Burdekin involves Dr Collins developing a method to sample fish in the waterways just by collecting water samples.

“We do that by collecting five samples at a waterway, sending them to the lab, they’ll extract the DNA in that sample and amplify it,” he said.

“If you’ve done a good enough representative sample, you can basically get a good picture of what’s in a waterway just by taking a water sample.”

BCF is a major partner with OzFish and BCF Ayr Manager Laurinda George is heavily involved as one of five local volunteers.

“It gives our team that confidence to talk about what is happening in our local waterways and how we can work towards improving the waterways and understand the quality,” Ms George said.

Ms George said the North Queensland chapter is always looking for more volunteers.

“It’s not like we have a lot to be done but more hands would be great,” she said.

To find out more about volunteering or donating to OzFish, visit ozfish.org.au or visit BCF Ayr.

“Every dollar that people donate through BCF, BCF actually matches, and that money goes to supporting OzFish locally,” Ms George said.

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Local volunteers assist in monitoring local waterways. Photo supplied