Wearing Shoes first time this year.

[rayke1938]

Yesterday I had the opportunity of going an a conducted tour of the Fisheries Research Station at Woorim.

The only drawback was that I was required to wear covered footwear and the last time I wore my shoes was for a XMAS party last year.( Must be a good thing as no funerals :cheer: )

I had heard good things about this place but was totally unprepared for what I experienced.

Absolutely gobsmacked.

Fantastic to see our taxpayers money being spent by such a devoted team with every person absolutely committed to their jobs.

If you ever get the opportunity of going on a tour of the facility grab it even if you have to take a day off work without pay.

You will need a reasonable camera . I had a lot of trouble as mine was too slow to capture the fish feeding and could not cope with the reflections on the water surface.

I am sorry that I did not take notes but here are some random photos.

Aerial view of complex.

Pump station. Sea water is drawn from offshore of the complex and pumped up into header tanks from which it is distributed to different areas.

Large pond that is used to grow algae which is used to feed ( forgotten the name)which is consequently used to feed the laval stage of the cobia.

( Sorry if info is incorrect but no notes and my memory is like my fishing skills (rs))

Empty pond . These ponds are raised above ground level because of the high water table on the Island. They are also lined with plastic.

One of the requirements of granting permission of establishing a new fish farm is that the water output has no more nutrients than the water input.Here they have successfully established a method of using sand filters that have a colony of wriggler type worms that eat the nutrients in the water.

A valuable by product is the sale of the highly sort after wrigglers .

An example of my poor photography skills. If you look closely at the middle bottom of the photo you can just see a wriggler just above the if..

ore to come.

[rayke1938]

Unsuccessful photo of cobia feeding.

All tanks covered with netting for obvious reasons.

More to come.

[Fish Head]

That is so cool!

More JP pics please

Cheers

Duncan

[rayke1938]

Very interesting on ongoing problems with the development of the Jungle perch saga.

I really hope that they can have success and subsequently reestablish populations of these beautiful fish in SEQ.

Wish I could catch a bass as large as some of these.

Bit difficult taking photos through the feeding holes as the fish would see the camera and would come up looking for a feed and splash the camera if you held it too close to the water.

Bit more to come

[rayke1938]

Lone barra. Bit surprised when Peter in his introductory talk said that the majority of farmed barra come from freshwater ponds on the Atherton tableland whiht only a small amount produced in brackish water on the coast.

\They are also running a blue sky project where they are experimenting with implanting the gonads of blue fin tuna into the eggs of mac tuna so that when the mac tuna mature they will produce blue fin tuna offspring.

The mac tuna reach breeding size very quickly compared with blue fin which take 9 years to mature.

Apparently overseas they have produced salmon from trout using this method.

I am very sorry I did not take notes as I have missed so much in the report.

Once again thanks to Red from Nuggett outdoors site who organized the tour and to Peter Lee the principle scientist, Matt Campbell and Luke ? who gave freely of their time and knowledge to conduct the tour.

Cheers

Ray

[rayke1938]

Juvenile mac tuna.

[samsteele115]

Very interesting Ray. Thanks for sharing

[kmcrosby78]

Sounds like a great day out Ray and good to see the future is being looked after. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us. Bet you enjoyed taking your shoes off at the end of the day!!!!

[taib]

What an experience this would have been. Thanks for sharing Ray.

[Angus]

Really cool stuff mate. Thanks very much for sharing.

Angus

[Glenn S]

cheers for the read Ray, great to see all this work being done! id love for jungle perch to reside in the streams of south east queensland once more! How often do they host tours such as this?

Glenn.

[rayke1938]

Glenn

It is just a matter of gathering a group of around 15 people who can get time off through the week and contacting them to arrange a suitable time,The one that I went on was arranged through Nuggett outdoors site But anyone can do it.Only condition is must wear covered footware

Cheers

Ray

[Andrew_P]

[attachment=66392]h04f8f3b.jpg[/attachment]

Lone barra. Bit surprised when Peter in his introductory talk said that the majority of farmed barra come from freshwater ponds on the Atherton tableland whiht only a small amount produced in brackish water on the coast.

\They are also running a blue sky project where they are experimenting with implanting the gonads of blue fin tuna into the eggs of mac tuna so that when the mac tuna mature they will produce blue fin tuna offspring.

The mac tuna reach breeding size very quickly compared with blue fin which take 9 years to mature.

Apparently overseas they have produced salmon from trout using this method.

I am very sorry I did not take notes as I have missed so much in the report.

Once again thanks to Red from Nuggett outdoors site who organized the tour and to Peter Lee the principle scientist, Matt Campbell and Luke ? who gave freely of their time and knowledge to conduct the tour.

Cheers

Ray

G'day Ray,

Probably would have been Luke Dutney - he's one of the hard-working fisheries technicians at BIARC. Those cobia are awesome to watch, especially at feeding time!

Cheers,

Andrew