If you like handicrafts, you've probably heard of a crafternoon (an afternoon crafting event), but have you heard of a CRAYfternoon?No? Well, we might have made the term up, but it fits perfectly for our recent working bees where our volunteers made more than...
I am currently in the last stages of my incredible Churchill Fellowship adventures. I have seen many wonderful things, walked a lot and learnt about all aspects of translocations and conservation more generally. I also met some inspiring people! This blog covers my time in...
Did you know that the second largest freshwater crayfish in the world, the Murray Crayfish (Euastacus armatus), was once widespread and abundant in the Murray River in South Australia? However, following population loss attributed to habitat degradation such as the regulation of flows and water...
Over the past four years, we have continued monitoring populations in the Murray River that had suffered significant (80% decline) population loss due to the 2010‒11 extreme blackwater event. Over that time, we have only observed a gradual increase in the abundance of affected populations,...
Fish stocking for fishery purposes is routinely undertaken, but conservation translocations remain relatively uncommon in the aquatic world (in terrestrial ecosystems however they are more widespread). On a sunny day in late July 2017, a small but important step toward the recovery of Murray crayfish...
With the impacts (and fishing closures) occurring in New South Wales, Victoria now maintains the geographically largest recreational fishery for the species. With this in mind, it is timely that we have just finalised the most comprehensive assessment of the Victorian recreational fishery in Victoria ever...
After four years of searching, which included over 7700 net hours (number of nets per site times by the number of hours each net was set for - that’s also 321 net days), at almost 30 sites we have failed to detect a single Murray crayfish...
Freshwater crayfish are poor dispersers – predominately moving by crawling across the bottom of rivers and creeks – so it is hard to imagine that individuals, separated by over 2000kms of waterways, can be genetically similar and form part of a single interbreeding grouping. These...
[caption id="attachment_13670" align="alignleft" width="300"] Representatives from Fisheries Victoria, local fishers and Sylvia (third from right) at the Nagambie fisher forum[/caption] Last week, we attended Fisheries Victoria fisher forums at Wodonga and Nagambie, which are part of a series of forums held across the state to get input...
The Managing the recovery of Murray crayfish in the southern Murray-Darling Basin project is well underway with a number of important events taking place recently. Firstly, repeat monitoring of sites impacted by the 2010-11 blackwater event has highlighted increased numbers of crayfish in affected areas. Whilst these outcomes of the monitoring...
