Temporal Patterns in Fish Use of Restored Intertidal Estuarine Habitats

Christopher Lowe, Temporal Patterns in Fish Use of Restored Intertidal Estuarine Habitats

Winner - Central Queensland University VYT local programme (2023)

Transcript:

Intertidal habitats are key environments in seascape ecology as they provide resources to marine habitats from terrestrial sources and vice versa.These habitats also present highly variable environmental conditions due to the cyclical nature of the tides and lunar cycles and as such both can act as potential driving forces behind species specific habitat usage patterns.This project aims to investigate the temporal usage patterns of fish within restored intertidal estuarine habitats using a mixture of fish community surveys (using beach seine netting) and predation rate assessments (using intertidal squidpops based off the initial design by Emmet Duffy)To elaborate, intertidal squidpops are small electronic devices that use disks of squid meat as a bait. The electronics in the device determine when this bait is eaten and allows for the predation time to be related to the tide time.These measures will be used to assess patterns in fish assemblages across tidal, lunar and seasonal scales and could be used to better inform how intertidal fish will respond to restoration work.