Fish communities third best in a decade of monitoring

DBCA and Murdoch University have a long-standing relationship when it comes to assessing the fish communities of the Swan Canning Riverpark. Since 2012, the organizations have been working together to report annually on the fish communities using the fish community index.

The index provides a biotic assessment of river condition to complement water quality monitoring and has been shown to be a sensitive and robust tool for quantifying ecological responses to local-scale environmental perturbations and recovery.

A report just released, documents the fish community index for the 2023 monitoring year and shows it to be the third best on record, after 2022, which was an exceptional year for fish communities driven by excellent winter flows and the absence of significant summer rain events and algal blooms.

Monitoring for 2024 is already underway, but results may not be so good, given the very low tides and hot conditions we have seen to date.

Read the full report here.