OzFish Moreton Bay OzFish Chapter

About OzFish Moreton Bay OzFish Chapter

The Central Moreton Bay OzFish Chapter was established in 2017 and over the past three years, the passionate team has singlehandedly grown the Chapter to hundreds of members who together drive fish habitat improvement, fisher education and angler science across Moreton Bay Queensland.

Almost half of the recreational fishing that occurs in Queensland is based in Moreton Bay. The 2019 State-wide survey estimates that some 400,000 SE Queensland residents participate in recreational fishing in Moreton Bay.

The Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land and sea in the Moreton Bay region include the Jagera/Turrbal, Jinibara and the Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi peoples.

The largest community-driven shellfish reef restoration project in Australia is in Moreton Bay Queensland

Over the next six years, volunteers will build more than 50,000 Robust Oyster Baskets (ROBs) and deploy them to reform a living vibrant ecosystem donated for restoration by the Port of Brisbane.

Moreton Bay Shellfish Recycling Centre

The establishment of the Moreton Bay Shellfish Recycling Centre is just one part of the journey to restore Moreton Bay’s shellfish reefs.

Used shells are collected from seafood businesses and restaurants across Brisbane. These shells are needed to restore the reefs as research has shown used shells encourage live oysters to return and reestablish themselves naturally. Every oyster shell that is recycled and placed back into a suitable reef restoration site will provide a home for up to 10 baby oysters. The recycling center sterilises the used shells from disease and pests for up to 4 months before placing them back in the Bay.

Our Oyster Lease

Through funds raised at the Wynnum Manly Seafood Festival and ongoing community donations, the OzFish Chapter has been able to purchase an oyster lease to help grow baby oysters (spat) to reinvigorate the reef and kickstart shellfish reef regeneration.

Baskets were placed out on the lease in November 2019 and were filled with thousands of recycled shells. Within a few months, they’ve shown new shellfish successfully growing with oysters, mussels, and other shellfish. A recent survey counted the life on 200 shells and there were 1,123 new oysters and 457 mussels.

Over time the oysters and mussels will grow and bind together and provide ridged structures. These will then be transferred to the trial site to establish and form the new reefs.

The Robust Oyster Basket

Creating oyster reefs is a tricky business and often requires collaboration between communities, businesses and volunteers.

OzFish members decided to take advantage of oysters’ natural tendency to grow together in clumps and created a Robust Oyster Basket, affectionately known as a ROB. These make it easy to transfer the used shell to the restoration site and also ensure volunteers can have the opportunity to help deploy the reefs without any heavy machinery.

The ROBs is made from degradable steel mesh that is filled with recycled oyster shell volunteers help clean at the shell recycling center. The mesh takes about 2 years to degrade which gives the oysters and other shellfish time to clump together before completely rusting out, leaving only a solid structure of oyster shells and living shellfish.

Our Partners

None of this work would be possible without the support from our partners and community groups across Brisbane and in particular the Wynnum Manly community.

This project is supported by Healthy Land and Water through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program, Queensland’s Community Fishing Grants Program, BCF – Boating Camping Fishing, The Moreton Bay Foundation, Tackle Tactics, Iona College, Rotary and more.

Protecting and restoring Australia’s fishing habitats now and for future generations

OzFish is Australia’s only fishing conservation charity – dedicated to empowering and supporting recreational anglers and their communities to take control of the health of their rivers, lakes and estuaries. 

We operate across the country and through our network of members and volunteers, organised into local Chapters. OzFish has delivered dozens of impactful habitat restoration projects which benefit fish. 

By restoring habitat, we are improving the ecosystem of Australia’s waterways and providing healthy environments for native fish species to not only survive but thrive. This helps to ensure that, for years to come, Aussies will continue to enjoy their favourite fishing spots. 

We believe the most complex and seemingly impossible challenges can be solved when people come together and get to work. We were founded by anglers, waterway stewards and ocean lovers who saw that the waterways in Australia we loved were being degraded, and not much was being done about it.

We achieve this by bringing people and science together – engaging volunteer members and local communities, as well as working with partner organisations at a state and national level, to support our projects.

Our work includes; making local fishing grounds healthier, vibrant and more productive, sharing habitat restoration knowledge, research projects with leading universities, community engagement workshops, school education programs, and partnering with traditional owners and their communities.

Across Australia, we deliver both inland and coastal habitat restoration projects – operating in salt and freshwater.

At the heart of our work are passionate recreational anglers who drive projects from the ground up. OzFish is responsible for the development and delivery of the largest community-led seagrass restoration project in Australia. We are leading the way in establishing the largest seagrass restoration projects on both the east and west coasts. These are projects that everybody can get involved in to support the re-establishment of healthy marine environments and improve our fishery.