Rapid assessment of fish biodiversity in southern Gulf of Carpentaria catchments

Abstract

No studies of freshwater fish populations or aquatic environments had been conducted at a catchment-wide level in the Southern Gulf region and so no basis existed for informed planning for the sustainable development and conservation of the region’s rivers. As an initial step, the Southern Gulf Catchment Centre commissioned a rapid inventory of fish species and an assessment of aquatic habitat condition and potentially threatening processes.
During this project, we sampled 41 sites and mapped the distribution and abundance of a preliminary list of 50 species of freshwater fish in the Flinders, Leichhardt and Nicholson catchments. Four species are possibly undescribed and at least another four species remain to be positively identified by the Queensland museum. Two species had previously been recorded only from the Northern Territory. Another species was restricted to just one site in the region.