Portarlington fishing reef to be upgraded

A RECREATIONAL reef at Portarlington is one of six to be upgraded using funds raised from the most recent year of Victorian fishing licences.

Each year, the Recreational Fishing Licence (RFL) Trust Account allocates fees paid for the licences to projects that directly improve recreational fishing across the state.

The Large Grants Program stream of the Recreational Fishing Grants Program will fund 10 projects using funds from 2022-23.

One of these is $317,514 to OzFish to enhance six recreational fishing reefs in Port Phillip Bay by adding recycled shell material to the three nearshore reefs at Portarlington, Altona and Frankston; and to three reefs about 2km off the coast of Aspendale, Seaford and Frankston respectively.

The work aims to attract species such as snapper, calamari, whiting and flathead.

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

Like many other bays and estuaries, Corio Bay and Port Phillilp Bay once had vast areas of shellfish reef and mussel beds, but these have been lost over the past 200 years through overharvesting, pollution and smothering from sediments coming down the rivers.

Last month, OzFish deposited about a tonne of recycled scallop shells deployed to its reef site off Mornington as part of the Port Phillip Community Reefs Project.

Shells are bagged up and deployed from the surface at a specific location, dropping to the bottom to create a complex interlocking reef bed for colonising species.

Using recycled scallop shells sourced through The Nature Conservancy’s “Shuck Don’t Chuck” program, the Mornington site is a long-term project and the shells will eventually become a solid reef base.

The state government says more than $1.6 million of licence fees have been reinvested in the past financial year to create more fish habitat, education, research, access and facilities.