Department of Aquatic Resources Management (MSP), Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences (FPIK) IPB University held a public lecture entitled ‘Theme Importance of Fishway to Maintain Aquatic Biodiversity’. This activity presented Prof. Lee Baumgartner, Executive Director of the Gulbali Institute for Agriculture, Water and Environment, Charles Sturt University (CSU), New South Wales-Australia.

“Maintaining aquatic biodiversity is one of the competencies of the IPB University MSP Department,” said the Head of the IPB University MSP Department, Prof. Hefni Effendi. This lecture is one of the collaborative activities between MSP IPB University and CSU and the Center for Conservation of Marine and Freshwater Resources Research, the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

Prof. Lee delivered a lecture entitled ‘Pushing Fish Uphill-Opportunities for Recovering Fisheries in the Oceania Region’. There are four parts of the material that he explained; The first is related to ‘All Fish Are Important and All Fish Migrate’. In this section, Prof. Baumgartner drew the participants’ attention to the rich biodiversity of fish in Indonesia.

“There are approximately 1,000 species of freshwater fish in Indonesia. Some species require migration across rivers from upstream to downstream or vice versa to complete their life cycle,” he said.

In the second part, he explained about ‘River Development Can Impact Both Salt And Freshwater Fish’. He is of the view that the construction of irrigation weirs can disrupt the process of fish migration.

“This obstacle for fish is a behavior barrier caused by changes in various aquatic environmental conditions such as temperature, light, dissolved oxygen and chemical contaminants. Examples are a decrease in the number of fish in the Murray Darling River Basin-Australia, a decrease in the number of Chinook salmon in the USA and a decrease in the number of glass eels (eel larvae) in Indonesia,” he explained.

The third part is entitled It is possible to reconstruct swimways, fishways are a solution. He emphasized that the existing obstacles did not have to be removed, but that they could be repaired.

“There is a solution to help fish migrate. The key is that we have to study the entire life cycle of fish to build a fishway. Thus, each specification and type of fishway to be built must be in accordance with the target fish and river hydrology,” he explained.

The last part, Prof. Lee delivered material entitled ‘Reinstating Fish Passage is not Quite Enough to Recover Fisheries’. According to him, the solution to improve fisheries needs to be integrated at the watershed (DAS) level in order to improve fish biodiversity in rivers.

Dr. Arif Wibowo, Head of the Research Center for Marine and Freshwater Resources Conservation, BRIN added, with the issuance of RI Presidential Instruction No. 1 of 2023 concerning Mainstreaming Biodiversity Conservation in Sustainable Development. According to him, this instruction can strengthen the need for a fishway to complement the infrastructure built on the river.

The webinar was also attended by Dr. Caroline Turner (Programme Manager of the Food and Agriculture Organization); Dr Chris Barlow (Adjunct Research Professor-CSU); PhD candidate Dwi Atminarso and Vitas Atmadi Prakoso, MS. The public lecture was hosted by Dr. Majariana Krisanti and was attended by hundreds of participants who attended both offline and online. Those present included master and doctoral students from the Study Program (Prodi) Management of Aquatic Resources (SDP), Study Program of Coastal and Marine Resources Management (SPL), Study Program of Natural Resources and Environmental Management (PSL) as well as a number of practitioners from industry, government and institutions nongovernmental. (MYK/AAY/Rz).

Sources: IPB News