Sustainable Aquaculture & Consumer Security
From Catchment to Coast: Why Restoring Our Rivers is Essential for Future Food Security
When most people think of seafood, their minds drift immediately to trawlers out on the open ocean or coastal estuaries. But as aquatic food consumers, our plates are intimately tied to what happens hundreds of kilometres inland.
A feature on ABC’s Landline highlighted an inspiring example of whole-of-catchment restoration: the Resilient Rivers Program across Southeast Queensland. Driven by 11 regional councils, landholders, scientists, and community volunteers, the project is tackling riverbank erosion, clearing fish migration passages, and actively restoring apex native species like the iconic Brisbane River cod.
It serves as a timely reminder: we cannot have food security, clean water, or productive fisheries without healthy river catchments.
Rivers Are the Nursery of Our Food Systems
As Dr Jo Burton from the Resilient Rivers project pointed out, our tendency to view agriculture, water utilities, and the environment as separate silos is a fundamental mistake.
- The Upstream-Downstream Link: When major flood events rip tonnes of topsoil from inland farms, that sediment chokes downstream waterways, degrades coastal nurseries in Moreton Bay, and threatens metropolitan drinking water supplies.
- Rebuilding Habitat: Initiatives like installing timber groynes to stabilise riverbanks, planting 200,000 native riparian trees, and opening up 40 km of fish passages prove that targeted civil and environmental engineering directly revitalises aquatic ecosystems.
Restoring the Apex Predators: "Cod Hotels" and Ecosystem Balance
One of the standout initiatives highlighted by Landline is the Brisbane River Cod Recovery Project, coordinated by Gary Fitzgerald.
- Missing Apex Species: When an apex predator fish goes locally extinct, the entire aquatic web suffers. Weaker fish multiply unchecked, and invasive pest species like Carp and tilapia take over freshwater systems.
- Targeted Breeding Shelters: By placing salvaged, hollow logs ("native cod hotels") back into the riverbed, volunteers and scientists are recreating the natural woody debris that native cod need to lay and guard their eggs.
- Cutting-Edge Monitoring: Teams are using environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling and electro-fishing surveys to track biodiversity recovery across more than 250 waterway sites.
The Carp Dilemma: Dump the Virus and Build a Centre of Excellence
With Landline previewing Carp control in the Murray River, the online community at Fishing Shed Bathurst recently raised a vital debate: after spending upwards of $24 million on the National Carp Control Plan with no resolution in sight, why are we still chasing an unproven biocontrol virus? Releasing a virus risks massive water-quality devastation, would likely leave half the population intact, and would quickly select for virus-resistant super-Carp.
Instead of treating European Carp solely as a biological waste problem to poison, we should treat it as an unharnessed resource. The SCA strongly agrees it is time to abandon the Carp virus plan and establish a Freshwater Aquatic Food Centre of Excellence (FAFCoE). By investing in commercial harvesting and processing infrastructure, Australia can transform invasive Carp biomass into high-value human nutrition, pet food, organic bio-fertilisers, regional manufacturing jobs, and export revenue—turning an ecological pest into an engine for national food security.
Note: We are importing Carp at the moment - most Asian retailers have stock!
The Consumer Perspective: A Unified Blue Economy
For Australia’s 26 million seafood consumers, healthy freshwater systems represent more than scenic recreation—they are the foundational lifeblood of domestic aquatic food security.
Whether it is native fish recovery in Queensland or commercially harvesting Carp across the Murray-Darling basin, our aquatic systems do not stop at local council or state borders. Australia requires a unified, national strategic approach that treats water management, habitat restoration, and sustainable food production as parts of one connected whole.
Every time we support whole-of-catchment health, we safeguard our drinking water, protect productive primary producers, and invest in a sustainable aquatic food future for generations to come.
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