Dr Brenton Zampatti

The Golden Ticket: Understanding the role of flow on golden perch movement and population dynamics at a basin scale

Golden Perch Macquaria ambigua are a native fish species distributed widely across the lowland rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), with the species known to undertake long-distance movements over 100s to 1000s of kilometres when unrestricted by barriers. While environmental flows are increasingly used to enhance movement of golden perch, knowledge gaps remain specific to the spatio temporal dynamics of these movements, how they are influenced by flows, and how such movements influence population dynamics at both regional and the MBD scale. In response to such, the Basin-scale fish theme’s research portfolio had a strong focus on understanding the role of flows in governing movement of golden perch across the MDB and how this movement influences the population dynamics.

Regional and inter-regional fish movement responses to varying river discharge

Fish and flows in the MDB: Learnings from the Fish Theme Basin-Scale Evaluation

The Basin-scale evaluation describes fish responses to Commonwealth environmental water for 2019–20 as well as the cumulative outcomes since monitoring began in 2014 to answer the following evaluation question: What did Commonwealth environmental water contribute to sustaining native fish at the Basin-scale? In this webinar we discuss fish and flows in the Murray-Darling Basin, current findings from the Basin-scale evaluation and challenges and future directions for assessing fish population responses to flows.

Fish population diversity and abundance in the MDB

The Fish Theme of the Flow-MER program is evaluating the contribution of Commonwealth environmental water to fish population diversity and abundance across the Murray-Darling Basin. In this webinar video, we discuss fish population models and integrated analysis of fish movement data to illustrate river system connectivity.