Inaugural First Nations environmental educational event

Around 80 high school students attended the inaugural First Nationals environmental educational event on the Peel River on Thursday, November 14.

Transcript

00:00What everyone is really interested in and uses as a case is electrofishing basically

00:08instead of using a fishing line to catch the fish or nets, you actually put electricity

00:13into the water and it stuns the fish, it doesn't kill them, it just puts enough in there so

00:16that they freeze and then you can pick them up with the nets, then you can weigh and measure

00:20them and you can let them go.

00:21So fisheries and other fishing agencies have been using this for years and years.

00:28So I think the main thing here is to get the kids and the school involved in understanding

00:33what sort of science water in NSW uses, to look at different strategies we've had to

00:39implement such as the snags and see exactly how that helps fish and the river recover.

00:45Different animals and species inhabiting it and utilising the snags and you can see that

00:50from what we've collected today.

00:53They're good to go, there's another type of prawn here, it's a bit of a striped prawn.

01:08I thought they would electrocute the fish but no, it's the shocking of them, just a

01:14bit stunned, make them easier to catch and I found that really interesting.

01:20The device will measure water velocities and depth and give us an indication of our

01:31area and average velocities and automatically compute that into a stream discharge for us

01:36and that's helpful for our river operators to ensure that we're releasing enough water

01:42or if we need to reduce releases and things like that for people to make management decisions.

01:48I've been finding today really interesting, seeing how all the different machines and

01:58how different fishing works.

02:01I think my favourite part so far was seeing the electrofishing.

02:05So we've caught a couple of small fish and we've also caught things called, I don't know,

02:12yabbies, prawns, what do you call them, crawdads or something.

02:14I think the snags will make a big difference and fisheries have shown that as soon as you

02:17put habitat into places like this, fish come to it and will utilise it so I think it will

02:23definitely improve the fishing in this area.