Marine fish stocking!

[Scraglor]

You need to remember that each female fish produces millions and millions of offspring throughout her life, there are PLENTY of fish in the sea. How many of those offspring survive though, depends on a couple of things - food available, predator population and habitat etc. The better the habitat, and the more food is available, the more offspring will survive.

If you introduce more of a particular species, without making the environment more favourable to individuals' survival, I think the population of that species will simply gravitate back to exactly where it is now. Introduced individuals will compete with wild-born individuals for food and habitat, in the long term the population wont change.

The only way to make real change to the population of a species is to encourage the survival of more young, by improving the habitat of both that species and the species it feeds on. That means more artificial reefs etc, with maybe a thunderdome-type physical barrier over smallish concrete pads giving young fish a place safe from fishing and large predators. A few thousand of those scattered around the bay would make a real, lasting difference to fish populations IMO

You make a good point there mate, maybe one problem is that the fish we are all suggesting are apex predators, and without the supporting biomass of bait fish, you cant support a larger population of predators. That being said, I have seen many, many, many, reports of large numbers of bait species in the bay to the point that it is being blamed on a slower than average snapper season last year as fish were believed to be over fed. Is there any science on the recruitment of larger species vs the prevalence of bait species lately?

I have always believed the lower down the food chain you eat, the more sustainable it is. Hence the reason I have been trying to cook up species like, yakkas, slimeys, leatherjackets, pilleys etc. TBH, Yakkas/Cowanyoung make great sashimi, and I would eat it any day of the week, and a whole fried LJ is superb. Next on my list is the humble Banjo, I am hoping that it taste good if treated with care.

Maybe if we take more interest of the lesser species we catch, the fishery will be better off as a whole

[4liters]

That is correct, and the smaller the fish (or anything else for that matter) is the more sustainable it is because it requires less energy (i.e. food) to get to that size. Of course the more of those that get eaten by us, the less there are for other fish higher up the food chain, so the best practice is to ensure that any given population is only being fished at a sustainable rate regardless of how big they are.


I heard that one of the reasons for the large amounts of baitfish in the bay is the dredging opening up the channels a bit and allowing more cool, oxygenated water in. No idea if it is true or not as I haven't been able to find any research on the matter.