More Than Water Quality: Environmental Limitations to a Fishery in Acid Pit Lakes of Collie, South-West Australia

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publisher

International Mine Water Association

Faculty

Faculty of Computing, Health and Science

School

School of Natural Sciences / Centre for Ecosystem Management

RAS ID

8394

Comments

Mccullough, C. D., Steenbergen, J., te Beest, C., & Lund, M. A. (2009). More than water quality: environmental limitations to a fishery in acid pit lakes of Collie, south-west Australia. Proceedings of International Mine water Conference. (pp. 507-511). Pretoria, South Africa. International Mine Water Association. Available here

Abstract

Marron (Cherax cainii Austin) are a freshwater crayfish native to permanent waterbodies in the south-west of Western Australia. A popular aquaculture and sports species, marron are considered a potential end-use fishery species for and have been deliberately released into several historic pit lakes of the Collie coal mining region. This study investigated what environmental factors in these acid mine drainage (AMD) contaminated pit lakes might be affecting the health and success of existing marron fisheries. Although pit lake water quality was often low (pH concentrations) this did not appear to lead to lower marron health indices. Rather, lack of burrow habitat, low biomass and quality of food with further competition for these resources from related non-fishery crayfish species may be the most important factors limiting marron health. Decreased marron health is likely to result in decreased individual growth rate and final fishery biomass. Such ecological considerations are not common to the mine water literature but offer a more holistic perspective to much mine water research and may provide more tangible environmental goals for achieving environmental and social sustainability of mine waters.

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