An international meeting on fish and irrigation hosted by Cambodia’s Fisheries Administration and Australia’s Charles Sturt University kicked off in Phnom Penh on Tuesday following a two-day field trip to fishways in Pursat province.
The three-day programme brings together dozens of fish biologists and irrigation engineers from Cambodia and Laos along with other stakeholders.
These include the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the Mekong River Commission (MRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
During Tuesday’s session, Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute Deputy Director Tob Chann Aun gave an overview of projects integrating fish into irrigation in Cambodia.
National University of Laos President Oudom Phonekhampheng and Lao Irrigation Department Deputy Director-General Khamhou Phantavong did likewise for river development in Laos. The work has centred on building fishways to help migratory fish move past barriers like dams, weirs and other water-retaining structures.
Staff at the university’s Gulbali Institute for Agriculture, Water and Environment in Albury have been working on fishway development with local partners in Cambodia since 2018 and Laos since 2008.
On Wednesday, the Cambodian and Lao groups are scheduled to split up into two teams to focus on the findings of a recent workshop hosted by the Australian university and prioritise sites for future fishways near Phnom Penh and Vientiane.
Participants are then scheduled to accompany ACIAR Chief Executive Andrew Campbell to Kampong Thom province on Thursday to visit a fishway on the Stung Chinit river, completed with ADB assistance in 2006.
“The assistance of our Australian and U.S. partners has greatly accelerated development of fish passage in Cambodia, which is providing direct benefits to the local communities in catchments where fish passage has been established,” Mr. Tob Chann Aun said.
“Our future programme will expand on this very successful work and spread fish passes to many new areas in Cambodia.”
Gulbali Institute Interim Director Lee Baumgartner outlined future plans. “Over the next three years, we will be developing masterclasses, demonstration sites and working with government and development agencies to improve policy and governance frameworks,” Dr. Baumgartner said.
“The hope is that we establish a community of practice which ensures fisheries and irrigation sustainability into the future.”
Pioneered in Europe and North America for migrating cold-water fishes like salmon, fishways have since been developed to help aquatic species migrate in tropical rivers, notably in South America, Australia and — most recently — the Lower Mekong Basin.
In addition to Cambodia and Laos, Charles Sturt University has been developing fishways in Myanmar and — in partnership with USAID — Thailand and Vietnam.
A key partner has been Australasian Fish Passage Services Pty. Ltd., a company that has installed 25 “cone” fishways in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Such fishways — known as “dragon teeth” fishways in Laos – use concrete cones placed below a barrier to create pools like a rocky stream bed. These allow water to flow downstream and fish to swim upstream from pool to pool — and eventually past the barrier.
“It’s been great to see Australian-developed fish passage technology implemented so successfully in the Mekong region, with hundreds of thousands of fish passing barriers where they previously could not,” said Tim Marsden, a fish biologist who serves as the company’s principal.
“This has directly benefitted the local communities in these areas and we look forward to learning from these structures and assisting local organisations to construct more fishways suitable for local fish species,” Mr. Marsden said.
Source: Agency Kampuchea Press