The Western Australian Fish Foundation convened a workshop during 2007 to discuss the implications of the highly successful project ‘’Restocking the Blackwood River Estuary with the Black Bream Acanthopagrus butcheri’’ funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. In this project, 220,000 hatchery reared fish were marked and restocked, bred from 100 locally caught broodstock, with high survival that was monitored over 8 years.
The aim of the Workshop was to discuss the results and implications of the study, to understand the current environmental condition of the Blackwood River Estuary and to determine what issues should be addressed in the future.
The evidence presented pointed to a general decline in the health of the environment of the Blackwood River Estuary over an extended period since the early 1970s. Research also clearly indicated a significant reduction in black bream catch by recreational fishers from the system over the past 25 years.
The high survival of the introduced bream and the low cost of the project led to calls for a halt to the extraction of bream and for ongoing restocking to maintain fish stocks in the Blackwood Estuary. The complete report can be found here.