queensland Closed Waters

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Extract from email from LAFMA 

Please refer to the QBFP Update below from Coby Walker, A/Senior Compliance Officer, Qld Boating & Fisheries Patrol. This was to be included in the September Issue of FFSAQ News.

Lloyd Willmann,

FFSAQ Media Officer

QBFP update: Why have closed waters when there’s no flow?

 G’day again from the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol. Time to get into some nitty gritty about specific issues.

This month I want to focus on regulated waters, or closed waters as they are commonly referred to. While regulated waters is the legal term used in the Fisheries Act, we’ll stick with closed waters throughout this article.

Why do we have closed waters? The simple answer is that most of our native species move upstream and downstream regularly, given an appropriate flow. The most common and uniform fish movement is when fish want to spawn and they head upstream. After their spawning migration, they will head back downstream.

Barriers such as weirs and dams prevent these natural movements and large numbers of fish tend to gather above or below the barriers. So we close these areas to all forms of fishing to protect any masses of fish – this is particularly important if fish are in spawning mode. It’s just common sense really.

So why are the closures maintained when there is no flow? We are in a drought, there has been no flow at most dams for years, the fish are not gathering at these barriers, so there is no reason to protect those areas – is there? 

Yes there is. Firstly, sometimes the fish do still gather near those barriers as it may be the deepest water or the upstream end of a hole. Secondly, we find that many fishers are opportunistic and ‘follow the crowd’. Many of the people we catch in closed waters offer up the excuse that they didn’t know and only fished there because they saw other people fishing there earlier. 

So to ensure fish are protected if and when they gather on mass, we have to protect these areas all year round. Not because the fish are there, but to ensure there is a clear and consistent message that the area is out of bounds and not to fish in there, no matter what the fish might be doing. 

You can help by educating your local fishers (especially the young ones who may have never seen fish gather on mass) about the need for closed waters and the need to stay out of them. 

We generally have advisory signs at the boundaries of each closure, but these are not compulsory – they may even be out of sight at the 100% level (some distance from the water’s edge) or they may have been vandalised or torn down. You can’t rely on them being there, so it’s best to take a cautious approach around any type of dam or weir.

The most common closure on a weir or wall is 100 m upstream and 200 m downstream. There are a couple of areas around the state with customised distances that may differ from that, so again, encourage your fishing fraternity to check the rules at fisheries.qld.gov.au before they head out to an unfamiliar area.

We’d appreciate it if you could share this information with your networks and contacts. If you would like us to cover a specific issue in these articles, please contact the FFSAQ Media Officer.

Cheers

Coby Walker, District Officer

Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol ( Warwick )

 

 

Coby Walker

A/Senior Compliance Officer, Qld Boating and Fisheries Patrol

Department of Agriculture and Fisheries

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T 07 4542 6770 M 0408 884 033 E coby.walker@daf.qld.gov.au  W www.daf.qld.gov.au

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604 Yangan Road, Warwick QLD 4370

 

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