Thursday, December 17, 2009

Perks of the job

One of the nice things about my job is that ocassionally I get to escape the chore of admin and get out into the sun for a bit of fieldwork. Yesterday was one of those days.

Some colleagues and I headed off to Gippsland to collect fish. We spent the whole day fishing for them using small barbless hooks baited with corn. The fish we were after are not native to Australia. In fact, they are from Central America.

Even though these fish are essentially tropical, they have managed to establish themselves in a huge cooling pond downstream from a power station. The water in the pond was about 30 degrees which is perfect if you happen to be a tropical fish. Indeed, more than just one kind of tropical fish has managed to establish in the pond...During our fishing expedition, we even managed to catch a couple of species native to Lake Malawi (Eastern Africa)!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hazelwood cooling pond where we used to swim?

Adaptive Radiation said...

Yep. Teeming with tropical fish!