00:00We've been looking at the movement ecology of native fish, in particular Murray cod,
00:06one of our iconic species in the lower Murray region for almost 10 years now. It's part
00:10of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's Living Murray Program. So we've been using that information
00:15to work out where and when they go and whether they want to spawn or disperse, that kind
00:21of thing. And so as part of this project we've tagged a whole bunch of juvenile fish, which
00:26generally don't do a whole lot. But just as these fish sort of hit maturity, it coincided
00:31with a huge flood event and they sort of left our study area. And this fish in particular,
00:37so Arnie, turned up on one of our collaborators' receiver arrays a long way away, so nearly
00:43900 kilometres. We see it a bit in other species like golden perch, but for Murray cod, you know,
00:48they're sort of generally regarded as a bit of a homebody, like to live in their own pool or under
00:53their own log. And during breeding period, they'll venture 10s or maybe 100 kilometres.
00:59But for this distance, yeah, it far exceeded our expectations. In the mid Murray region,
01:04it did unfortunately cop a really significant fish kill event. We've seen reductions in Murray cod,
01:10at least just that species, reductions in their abundance. But at the same time, we've had some
01:16really good connectivity. And we know that species, one of the pathways to recover is via connectivity
01:22and immigration of fish coming from other areas that weren't impacted. So this result really does
01:28demonstrate the importance of connectivity and enhancing connectivity in terms of recovery pathways
01:34to these sorts of disturbances.
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