Awoonga - Sad News - Did not see any

[Brian D]

A mate of mine who runs a earth moving business got a call yesterday to go to Awoonga to did a hole and put all the dead barra in it. This is above the wall, not the ones that went over the wall.

Apparently due to all the rain the oxygen levels have dropped in the dam and the fish are dying. His job is to scoop as many dead fish out of the dam as possible then bury them. They say there are thousands dead.

If the rain stops I'll go and have a look - see if I can get some photos.

Very sad news for Awoonga Dam fans.

[Keen-as-fisho]

That is sad news. They say its the lack of oxygen levels due to the rain but could it have something to do with all the run off from the farms surrounding the dam, pestisides and watever else they spray with?

[rosstralia46]

this is terrible sad news considering how strong a fishery it is

[Brian D]

That is sad news. They say its the lack of oxygen levels due to the rain but could it have something to do with all the run off from the farms surrounding the dam, pestisides and watever else they spray with?

THere is a lot of water between the run off and the wall - the scientist say it would be too much nitrogen and no oxygen. This is a huge dam that has a massive water area.

I'll go and have a look

[eg_vtec]

dam terrible newss. hope their still there after all this rain

[maxi]

hey brian... thats terrible news mate ..

when i was up rocky a few yrs back, a lot of barra died due to the cold snap that occoured, not sure they had to dig a hole though.

keen as fisho is onto it ....bloody runoff from the farmed land could very well be a major player in this catastrophy ...

[Brian D]

I went out there to have a sticky beak and saw no dead fish. I'll have a chat with Lex later to find out what's going on.

[Brian D]

Here's some of the latest photos. I was at the wall for about 3 mins and didn't see any fish go over. I have been told that the scientist counted about 100 fish an hour a few days ago.

Now the water level has dropped a bit you can see what the fish have been smacking into

Carpark has a problem

There has always gotta be one - here's the ramp

[ellicat]

Great pics there Brian.

The oxygen problem is having the same effect at a dam near me.

Here's an 8 year old Barcoo Grunter that carked it from the same problem.

I saw it sucking the surface for a while and thought it was just sucking in the plethora of midgees that are about at the moment.

[Jimmyjack]

Be surprised if farming runoff has much to do with it. Most of the area around is grazing country. The soil is too poor to do much else... lighter ironbark country. Adding chemicals of any sort is not done on these places; that is from more intensive farming practices like crop growing but more particularly fruit and veg, cotton etc, and even these are pretty tightly controlled. Also given the size of this dam, i'd be very surprised if anything that was used would be in a concentration high enough to affect aquatic life. The overwhelming reason for fish kills like this is low oxygen, which occurs from a combination of high flow water plus the breakdown of vegetable matter in the water and the mixing of low oxygen water ffrom the deeper areas of the impoundment with the more oxygenated water at the top. The fish are also stressed and have lost their habitats and therefore require more oxygen. That woulud be my take in it.