MIKE Wallingford, a member of the Naturaliste Game and Sport Fishing Club has won himself the 2013/14 Send Us Your Skeletons (SUYS) grand prize.
This great prize will see Mike enjoy a six-night charter trip to the Montebello Islands for donating the skeletons of those three fish to help with the monitoring and assessment of important fish resources in WA.
The grand prize was donated by Montebello Island Safaris and the flights to and from Exmouth are funded by the Department of Fisheries.
Senior Research Scientist Dr David Fairclough said Mr Wallingford and other fishers who have donated fish skeletons (with the head and guts intact) to the SUYS program provided valuable and much needed support for the department’s research on WA’s prized demersal and nearshore fish species, like dhufish and Australian herring.
“While Mike is the lucky grand prize winner this year, he is one of many recreational fishers who donated nearly seven thousand frames from fish caught off WA’s West and South Coasts in 2013/14,” Dr Fairclough said.
“We are extremely grateful to all the fishers that have donated skeletons to the SUYS program over the past few years. The initiative is a long-term program and is continuing in 2014/15, so more skeletons and new donors are always needed. At this point, it’s good to stop and acknowledge those major and minor prize winners, the generous companies who provided the prizes and acted as drop-off locations and the fishers themselves.
“It shows thousands of recreational fishers take their stewardship of WA’s important fish resources seriously to ensure the future of their stocks, which will lead to quality fishing.”
Dr Fairclough said the SUYS initiative has also benefitted from the many tackle shops, caravan parks, marine businesses, angling clubs and retailers in Perth and regional areas that have been volunteering as drop-off points for fish skeletons.
“Data collected through this project helps in the ongoing assessment of demersal and nearshore fish stocks on the West Coast and now also the South Coast,” he said.
“Mike Wallingford has been donating skeletons to the initiative for four years and he’ll never forget how the frames from two dhufish and a baldchin groper he caught seven kilometres off Canal Rocks ended up becoming his ticket to an awesome fishing experience off WA’s North West Coast.”
To find out more about this research project go to www.fish.wa.gov.au/frames.
