BABY FISH DIE AT FEEDING TIME

I once lived in Maryborough, Queensland and was the Biology teacher at the Boys' High School.

At regular intervals, there would be large quantities of fish die in the Mary River, usually on a Friday.

Thousands of fish would be washed up on the high tide.

The reason was simple. The meat works was located on the river bank in the town. Every day, workers would throw the rubbish meat and bones into the river.

Hundreds of thousands of fish would be waiting in the river for the offal meat.

But on Friday afternoon, the meatworks would be cleaned with barrels of detergent and acid that would be sluiced in thousands of litres down into the river.

The acid water would be poured on to thousands of waiting fish that died within 30 minutes.

Many were juvenile fish that bred in the estuarine mangroves of the Mary River.

When outflow of poisons from the meat works coincided with a high or king tide, fish deaths would extend to the river mouth, 30 kilometers down stream.

Fish would be coming up the river on the high tide and meet a wall of poison coming down the river.

The destruction of fish in the Ramu, Sepik and Magadus Square will be on such a scale within a decade.

But the tuna that breed are international fish.

Magadus Square should have a world heritage listing. Please click:

MAGADUS SQUARE TUNA BREEDING HUB

Herein is set out basic principles of estuarine ecology that high school students in Australia would learn.