fish not fished out but killed out

[Razgo-]

I just watched this interesting video on how herbicides are killing out fish in the broadwater.

google video http://video.google.com.au/videoplay...oadwater&hl=en

[Donny Boy]

Geez, my ears must be on the way out........I thought he was talking about Turdidity............no it's Turbidity....

Makes a good point the boy, cause I can remember fishing down there on the Broadwater in the early 60's, and yes, there were HEAPS of fish.

A bucket of Whiting was no worries, just as he says.

And the cost of Glyphosate, as against giving someone a job and cutting the bloody grass on a regular basis........I'm sure, positive, that wages will come out a winner.
So............. why poison ??

I'm betting some bleeding heart Eco group has got into someones' ear about the amount of pollution put out by mowers.
And on the top of that, & how dangerous it is to work in the outdoors, near traffic.
Then you watch oldmate spraying the weeds on the road.....

[Razgo-]

lol, yeah i couldn't figure out at first what he was saying either.

But it does make you wonder how far reaching this type of pollution actually goes.
It certainly does make you think though.

[CreelReaper]

Well when you have a look at documents like this one it is no surprise to hear of this type of environmental vandalism and just another measure on how EPA are letting the community down.
http://www.ehmp.org/filelibrary/moreton_08.pdf

Shane

[RayDeR]

G'day!

I don't know whether he is right about the grass poison but I don't think he has been out fishing on the Broadwater lately.

He starts with the premise that the Broadwater is fished out. Hundreds of rec fishermen are out there every week proving him wrong.

He mentions Loders Creek which is a piddling litle creek which relies on rain fallt oflush it regularly. We have just been through a massive drought so the flush did not happen. He does not mention the Nerang which would collect more of this poison than Loders Creek. I would think that the Nerang was and is still a better
fishery than Lodersever was.

In the 70s I used to bring home a bucket of bream and they were mostly under legal size. Now (in winter) I can bring home a bucket full of legal size bream.

If the Broadwater is dead as he claims, how come there are so many blue soldier crabs and yabbies within a 100 yards of where he was talking from?

How come I can catch and throw back small fish of all types as well as catch all the fish I need to take every time I go out on the Broadwater.

Has he been on the Broadwater around Crab Island and seen all the sea grass there. Same Council, same poisons I would think.

Just this morning on Nugget's show there was comment on how many good flathead are around now. The comment was the right regulations have caused this.

He claimed there used to be forty dugong on the Broadwater. I never saw them but I think if someone started chewing into Farmer Brown's forty cows and a bull, they would be soon gone, too.

I wonder about his last attack on the Bulletin. He started his item quoting the Sun (free to each house) which is the sister paper of the Bulletin ($1 a copy) . They often don't print the same stories. Also the Sun has a much bigger readership than the Bulletin. I am wondering if the Buletin asked their fishing experts if the guy was right in claiming the Broadwater was fished out?

Ray De R

[Jackinthebox]

This is the sort of issue that we can make a point of through the "saveourbay" movement". It can help us show that as anglers, we do care about the marine environment and want to do something about it instead of spending tons of dollars to look like we are doing something whilst destroying a valuable industry and pissing a whole lot of people(fishermen) off.

Glyphosate is a nasty chemical, supposedly an endocrine disrupter (which does bad things to your body) and builds up in living tissue. They reckon it is being found in the tissues of a lot of marine animals and here's the wakeup call guys, that means the fish we eat. Remember the bit about it building up in living tissue? Well we are the top of the food chain. This crap has been giving me the shits for a while as I see them spraying the gutters of every street on the gold coast and the continuous blue/green stain left behind. Of course, as soon as we get the next bit of rain, it all goes straight into the gutters.

They are the same gutters that our caring "eco friendly" local govt/council stamped with the message to not put chemicals, toxic waste, etc, etc down there as it "flows to our waterways") See what i mean about appearing to be doing something. What a bunch of hypocrites!

The Brisbane council prob does the same thing.

And if you use Glyphosate (eg: ROUNDUP - you should seriously think about why you really need to use it .)

You wonder why cancer is so epidemic these days compared to 50 years ago, well a lot of boffins believe that besides the obesity epidemic, it has a lot to do with the thousands of toxic chemicals that have been introduced into our environment/food supply/houses, etc in that time.

I never really thought about the killing of the seagrass effect before though, which makes it even worse.

NO CHEERS THIS TIME,
Mick

[Ben D]

So Ray, are you saying that things are rosy in the broadwater, never been better ? I beg to differ - all through Moreton bay there is heaps of evidence of massive dieoffs of seagrasses - loss of prime juvenile nursery habitat - this must be having impacts on recruitment of many of our estuarine fish and crustaceans. I also have been privy to some rather shocking research recently in the Noosa river where we have seen Aussie bass broodstock at a fish hatchery become sterilised by being exposed to spray drift from nearby macadamia nut farms. The fungicides they are spraying are highly toxic, but of course get diluted when they fall on the broodstock ponds or runoff into the river. The resulting concentrations don't kill the adult fish, but has the fish hatchery been able to breed juvenile bass from their broodstock ever since ? No way - 100% mortality of the eggs. When you see a heap of bass eggs with the larvae inside with two heads, you begin to feel a little sick. They bred these fish for 25 years without a problem, until the macademia nut farms got built....

So to fix the problem the farmers needed to get more broodstock. Surprise surprise, gee these bass are hard to catch now in the noosa river. They had to employ the local pro (who has not seen a decent school of bass or yelloweye mullet in years, though they used to see tonnes of them in the 1990's) and evertually got half a dozen wild bass fresh from the river to spawn from. But guess what, 100% mortality of their eggs too.

You see, the fungicides and many of the pesticides are lipid (fat) soluble, accumulate in body fats and fish eggs each have a small lipid droplet in them to provide the larvae with nutrients in the first couple of days after they hatch........

I would hazard a guess to say that the impacts of glycophosphate, pesticides and fungicides on our fish stocks are enormous, but they are doing nasty things to the eggs and larvae which no one ever sees - or even knew about until recently. Then there are the endocrine disrupters from the birth control pill coming down in the sewage water - nasty hormone mimics which play havoc with little fish- it goes on and on - and guess what, the EPA don't test for these compounds at all in the healthy waterways programme - and Noosa River is the highest scoring in terms of river health of all our rivers in SE QLD. Imagine how bad it must be in some of the others....

[RayDeR]

G'day Ben!

All I am saying is that I fish between Sundale Bridge (Surfers Paradise) and Sovereign Island (Paradise Point) and that I see evidence of plentiful soldier crabs and yabbies, and all types of juvenile fish. Bird life is abundant in numbers and variety. I also catch a good variety of legal fish and am satisfied with the numbers I catch.

When the presenter in the video starts with the statement that the Broadwater is fished out then by the evidence I see of plenty of sealife, I then doubt the rest of his "scientific fact".

I am sure there are hundreds of active fisherman including those fishing numerous competitions who would agree with me.

This Southport Broadwater must also be one of the heaviest boat traffic areas in Queensland.

I notice there was reference to "40 dugong" in the Broadwater but I don't remember a year being stated. Over the weekend I will check with peoiple who have fished tthe Southport Broadwater for 60 years and see if they remember the herd of dugong.

The science guess may be right but there is no proven connection between glphospraying and seagrass disapearing. I would think there would be more nicotene from cigarette butts and diesel drips and asbestos fragments (from old brakes) being washed into the waterways than glyphosate, the chemical under discussion.

Ray de R

[CreelReaper]

This is a document that seems to pretty well identify some of the probles with this type of chemical and why there is and should be limitations on it's use.

http://www.apvma.gov.au/chemrev/down...glyphosate.pdf

Proof is in the pudding they say.

Shane

[RayDeR]

G'day Shane!

Thanks for the article. I read it with interest. For those who don't want to read 26 pages, there is an "executive summary" on page 5. The recommendations are in the second last paragraph.

I would make the following points.

1. This is an 12 year old article - 1996. Is there anything more recent? What was the result of these recommended changes?

2. This article relates to the on water spraying of weeds in agriculture, roadside and parks, etc. In relates to shallow water, ponds and puddles.

3. The recommendations ALLOW the spraying of dry water courses including irrigation channels and natural waterways.

4. The article refers to FRESH water not salt water.

I think my original statement that the connection in the video between glyphosate and dead seagrass is only a guess and not a scientific fact.

It may not be a wrong guess (I am inclined to think it is wrong) but where is the scientific proof?

Ray de R

[RayDeR]

GREENIE

G - Get a little bit of fact
R - Relocate it to your area of concern
E - Emotionalise it to grab at the heart not the dead
E - Endeavour to recruiot others especially the unquestioning to your cause
N - Never lose site of your goal -
I - Ignore any facts which act as speed bumps to your goal
E - Energise it - be excited and enthusiastic and they will be excited about it.

Ray De R

[RayDeR]

G'day!

As I promised in my post before Christmas I have checked with a friend who has fished the Southport Broadwater for 60 years. He does not remember ever seeing a dugong or hearing of them in the Broadwater. He has in Southern Moreton Bay but not in the Broadwater.

Remember scientific method is not shouting about a guess as if it is fact, but in proving the link betwen your guess (hypothesis) and known fact.

Ray de R

[CreelReaper]

Hey Ray,
Mate I understand where you are coming from. Your arguments for common sense are logical. I also agree that fishing is still good at times in and around the Gold Coast.
Whether you want to believe that all is rosy or not there is sufficient scientific information on the health of all of our fishery areas and not just due to weed killers or mozzie sprays or any other chemical. I have fished Moreton bay for well over 20 years and yes at times fishing is much better than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
The fact remains though that many of our waterways are sick and in dire need of help.
Not trying to being picky mate but your comments do nothing to highlight the problems that do exist, and much easier for EPA and other authorities to brush the real issues under the carpet.
It makes it much harder to push the conservation/environmental side and it also denegrates the message that we as fishos want to push to the relevant authorities.
As a side issue I think I have a copy of a document that places dugong within the boundaries of the broadwater from sitings many years ago. When I find it I will pass it on to you.
This is a link to a number of report cards for the Gold Coast region for you to have a look at at your leasure. It's just the tip of the iceberg mate....
It is also quoted that there are over 20 000 hectares of dying mangroves within Moreton Bay and the Gold Coast. There are a number of factors for this and it is possible that some of the chemicals used today are partially to blame.

http://www.ehmp.org/search.cfm
Cheers mate

[FNQCairns]

G'day Shane!

Thanks for the article. I read it with interest. For those who don't want to read 26 pages, there is an "executive summary" on page 5. The recommendations are in the second last paragraph.

I would make the following points.

1. This is an 12 year old article - 1996. Is there anything more recent? What was the result of these recommended changes?

2. This article relates to the on water spraying of weeds in agriculture, roadside and parks, etc. In relates to shallow water, ponds and puddles.

3. The recommendations ALLOW the spraying of dry water courses including irrigation channels and natural waterways.

4. The article refers to FRESH water not salt water.

I think my original statement that the connection in the video between glyphosate and dead seagrass is only a guess and not a scientific fact.

It may not be a wrong guess (I am inclined to think it is wrong) but where is the scientific proof?

Ray de R

The salt glyphosate (sp) is to the best of my knowledge is one of the most environmentally safe weed killers ever produced, non toxic to mammals and it is rendered inert fast by natural processes as do many many 'things' the public sees and knows about but very shortly after is rendered inert or passive in one way or another and without a large BOD or other damage done in the process.

Talking generally but it is sooooo easy to blow smoke up the general publics XXXX about 'what is and how much is' truly harmful by genuine degree and have them believe and repeat every word.


cheers fnq

[RayDeR]

G'day Watta!

I have kept my replies to addressing the unfounded statements in the video about the Broadwater here at Gold Coast and to pointing out the unrelated information in the article you supplied.

I probably never said it clearly but I think I was saying that if Dugong were in the Broadwater it wasnot known by a friend with 60 years of fishing the area and that they then disappeared long before glyphosate wassprayedby the Council.

Again yesterday, I managed to catch healthy juvenile fish of at least 5 species(bream, tarwhine, whiting, flathead, and something else - probably a trumpeter). Birds were feeding all around us and we saw anumber of rays.

I brought home a bream, a whiting and a bar-tailed flathead. I remind you I am only one of hundreds if not thousands who have done or will fish this waterway in the holiday period.

As to mangroves dyingi can only comment on what I see. I am sure the number of mangroves on Crab and Little Crab Island (in the Broadwater off Runaway Bay )have increased in number in the past ten years. Also there is a healthy crop of mangroves on the southern end of (man made) Ephraim Island which have thrived recently.

I am not commenting on Moreton Bay as I know nothing about it and it was not the subject of the video.


I will repeat: Remember scientific method is not shouting about a guess as if it is fact, but in proving the link between your guess (hypothesis) and known fact.

Ray de R