Carping on

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Carping on

Recent research has shown that carp can take advantage of works to regulate flows.

During the last drought, an earthen levee was constructed on the lower Murray River at Goolwa in an attempt to prevent
water acidification.
The abundance of common carp in the weir pool at Goolwa was between 1000 and 250 times greater than abundance in Lake Alexandrina, which was used as a reference site.
This was as a result of recruitment of young‐of‐year fish. No native freshwater species were significantly more abundant in the
weir pool.
It appears that the isolation of a river reach and a managed rise in water level facilitated carp spawning and recruitment.

Read more of this research by Christopher Bice and Brenton Zampatti in Ecological Engineering: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2011.06.046


source: Newstreams