The European carp which infest and degrade the Murray-Darling River system are disdained by most Australian human eaters of fish.
For a seal at Goolwa, however, a carp is a “highly-desirable, easily-caught meal”.
The recent “flood years” have flushed and funnelled umpteen millions of European carp through the Goolwa Barrage’s opened gates.
If long-nosed fur seals could speak English, they’d probably describe the Goolwa Barrage’s current hunting and dining “scene” as akin to “shooting fish in a barrel”.
When we entered the Coorong, on the morning of 13 March this year, the local long-nosed opportunists had already eaten their fill…as you can see, above.
As you will see in this series’ final chapter, when we returned to the pictured location, five hours later, carp-crunching had resumed.
For an overview of the barrages which “control” the interaction between the bottom end of Australia’s biggest river system, the Coorong, and the Southern Ocean, click here.
How well – or how badly – this “control” system works is the subject of endless debate, contention and research effort.
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