Swimming upstream hasn’t been this easy for decades.
In what is believed to be a Victorian first, an $800,000 fishway, or fish ladder, has been built in the Maribyrnong River at Keilor to help native fish species migrate upstream as part of their breeding cycles.
The fish ladder is part of a Melbourne Water project in which four barriers to upstream migration will be removed in an effort to boost native fish populations.
Man-made fords, weirs and dam walls built on the river since European settlement have obstructed upstream migration of the eight species of native fish and eight species of exotic fish that can be found in the river.
Melbourne Water west region services manager Emily Phillips said the fish ladder, in Brimbank Park near Garden Avenue, Keilor, was needed to help indigenous fish species complete their lifecycles.
“Native fish such as common galaxias spawn in the estuary [where saltwater and freshwater meet at the mouth of the river],” she said.
“The young fish are then swept out to sea and must migrate back upstream in order to live out their adult lives in the upper reaches of the river, returning each year to the estuary to spawn again.
“The fishway at Garden Avenue provides a critical point of passage upstream and down for native fish such as common galaxia, short-finned eel, tupong, short-headed lamprey and Australian smelt,” Ms Phillips said.
Two other barriers to upstream migration, at the Bluestone Ford and the Lower Brimbank Ford, have been removed in the past few years and there are plans in the works to build a
fish ladder at Arundel Weir in the coming
year.
