Diario del proyecto Australasian fishes

Last month, Allan Lugg was camping at the caravan park near Burdekin Falls Dam in northern Queensland. In his own words Allan "was doing a bit of iNaturalisting - looking for critters to take pics of and add to my record collection as well as get a bit of exercise". To this end Allan headed downstream, where about a kilometre below the dam, he observed 4 large (900-1000mm) dead Barramundi on the bank. He postulated that the fish died as a result of injuries received while going over the dam wall in the recent flood.

Allan stated, "The dam was still spilling while I was there. It was obvious that flows had been much higher (3-4m) during preceding weeks judging by the silt left on rocks and vegetation. The bottom of the spillway has a number of flow splitters (concrete pillars - see left image below, courtesy of CSIRO) that are intended to dissipate the energy, and it also discharges onto large rocks. I suspect the fish came over the spillway during the high flow (attempted downstream spawning migration perhaps) and sustained injuries from hitting the rocks or flow splitters and then washed up downstream.

Allan said that he walked about 1km of riverbank - so there may have been a lot more dead fish further downstream. He recalled a similar thing happened to Australian Bass downstream of Tallowa Dam 15 or 20 years ago."

Sadly, Allan's observation of dead Barramundi downstream of a dam is not a one-off. View a newspaper article about dozens of large Barramundi dying after going over Peter Faust Dam (right image above).

Thank you Allan for uploading this interesting observation and for your thoughts on the sad demise of these fish.