Prawn Watch

Prawn Watch was a project that engaged the Perth community in monitoring prawns in the Swan Canning Riverpark. It encouraged the sustainable management of the estuary and the fishery through data collection, information sharing and awareness raising and recently received a commendation for the Environment Award category at the 2017 WA Seafood Industry Awards.

Over the course of the 4-year project, 4.5 million juvenile school prawns were released into the Swan and Canning Rivers.  

The project also investigated the factors that are limiting the natural recruitment of the Western School Prawn and engaged the community to monitor the recreational fishery.  It was funded under the current Recreational Fishing Initiatives Fund (RFIF) supported by Recfishwest to help restore the highly valued and popular recreational activity of prawning for Perth families.

This pilot project is now at an end and the Recreation Fisheries Initiative Fund (RFIF) report has recently been released - Re-establishing recreational prawning in the Swan Canning Estuary (March 2017).

The information that the community have provided through Prawn Watch has complemented the Murdoch University-led monitoring and research of prawn populations. Through this monitoring, Prawn Watch was able to provide quality information on prawn populations and influence management (see section 6 of the RFIF report).

To complement the RFIF report, the final report - Restocking of the Western School Prawn in the Swan Canning Riverpark (October 2017) is now available.

The department continued to work with Murdoch University in 2017/18 to monitor the prawn populations in the Swan-Canning Estuary. You can read more on their findings in the following report  Changes in the abundance of the Western School Prawn during and after a restocking program (2019)