Participants in the slideshow examine how their regions are an essential source of material for a number of important industries. Local flora and fauna, local climate and geography often shape the livelihood of communities.
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Muntries ripe and ready to collect, Grant (Goolwa)
Skin, Grant (Goolwa)
Weaving products, Grant (Goolwa)
Master weavers creating their craft, Grant (Goolwa)
Picture of Aunty Ellen
Aunty Ellen Trevorrow preparing starters for basket weaving. Much time and effort are put into harvesting freshwater sedges and then the preparing them for groups at Camp Coorong to use for basket weaving. Now with water quality issues, salinity and contamination, the sedges (which are freshwater) are becoming harder to find.
Basket weaving, Grant (Goolwa)
Cockles, Henry (Goolwa)
Composite picture of cockling
The diversity of species mirrors the diversity of habitats available to the fishery, including the freshwater lakes Alexandrina and Albert, the estuarine/marine/hyper saline Coorong, and the coastal waters extending out to three nautical miles from Goolwa beach.
The dominant commercial species of the fishery currently are yellow eye mullet, mulloway, cockles, callop (golden perch), carp and to a lesser extent flounder and bony bream.
Fishing methods utilise low mechanisation coupled with highly energy efficient netting and manual harvest types. This results in low by-catch, highly specific methods when undertaken by the well trained operators. Significant effort reduction has taken place over the last 20 years to make up for gear developments.
The advantages of being a multi-species, multi-gear fishery is that there can be a rotational harvest system which shifts effort from one species to another. This enables operators to fish the peaks of the fish production as well as spreading effort across several species when conditions are ideal. This in addition to the owner-operator policy and the commitment to low impact fishing methods means the fishery has an ecosystem based focus and strong community links. Environmental changes cause significant inter-annual variability which has a huge impact on fishing activities and the ability to adapt to these changes is vital for industry.